ريتشارد دوكنز's Blog, page 341

Lay Off ‘Pot Cures Cancer’ Claims, FDA Warns

By Sara G. Miller

Medical marijuana may help with several health conditions, but it’s certainly not a cure for cancer. Now, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is cracking down on companies that claim their cannabis products can get rid of cancer.

The FDA issued warning letters to four companies that sell products containing cannabidiol (CBD) and claim the ingredient can treat or cure cancer, according to an FDA statement released yesterday (Nov. 1). CBD is a compound found in marijuana, but unlike another compound in the plant called tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), CBD doesn’t cause psychoactive effects.

CBD is sold in products such as oil drops, teas, capsules, syrups and lotions, the FDA says.

The four companies — Green Roads Health, Natural Alchemist, That’s Natural! Marketing & Consulting, and Stanley Brothers Social Enterprises LLC — sold, in total, more than 25 different types of products with unsubstantiated medical claims, according to the FDA.

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Global Climate Meeting Will Forge Ahead, Despite Trump’s Contempt

By Annie Sneed

A shadow looms over this year’s United Nations climate change meeting. The 23rd Conference of the Parties—or its shorthand, COP 23—begins Monday in Bonn, Germany. It commences just five months after Pres. Donald Trump announced he would withdraw the U.S. from the Paris climate accord, which aims to limit global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius—or ideally, 1.5 degrees C. The international community strongly reprimanded the Trump administration for its decision, and it has vowed to disregard that setback and forge ahead at COP23. No other countries have reneged on the accord.

Nations have a lot to figure out. The 2015 Paris accord “was a landmark agreement,” says Cara Horowitz, co-executive director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at University of California, Los Angeles, School of Law. “But it left many of the details about [implementation] still to be negotiated.” At COP 23, country representatives will work out the nitty-gritty of how to execute the accord, which will ultimately determine its long-term success. “This is quite a consequential meeting,” says Barry Rabe, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan. “It represents an important early test of [nations’] resolve to honor what they agreed on in Paris.”

The implementation guidelines that country representatives will develop are often collectively referred to as the “Paris rule book.” The numerous rules will address issues such as how countries will track and report their emissions and have them verified, all in a transparent way; how countries will be required to communicate their future emissions-reduction plans as well as their pledges for funding adaptation efforts; and if and how market mechanisms, such as emissions trading between countries, will be applied to national targets. The representatives will also address how nations will assess the gap between global progress made and the Paris agreement’s 2-degree C goal—a collective five-year review named the “global stocktake” that will commence in 2023. Experts say countries likely will not finalize any major guidelines during the two-week COP 23 meeting but will be making crucial progress.

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There is a third species of orangutan and somehow nobody noticed

By Aylin Woodward

The hominid family just got a little bigger. A new orangutan species has been found hiding in the forests of Sumatra. The Tapanuli orangutan is only the third orangutan species, and the seventh non-human great ape. But they may not be around for long: there are only 800 of them and they live in an area smaller than London.

For years, researchers have recognised two species of orangutan living in Indonesia: the Bornean orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) and the Sumatran orangutan (P. abelii). Both are critically endangered.

In the late 1930s there were reports of a population of orangutans in Tapanuli, in the Batang Toru area, south of the range of Sumatran orangutans, but the claims were never fully investigated. The Tapanuli population was only rediscovered in 1997 by Erik Meijaard at the Australian National University in Canberra.

Initial genetic studies suggested the population was unique, perhaps unsurprisingly, given the nearest orangutan neighbours were 100 kilometres away. Then in 2013, a male Tapanuli orangutan called Raya died of his wounds after a conflict with local villagers. Finally, scientists were able to study a Tapanuli specimen and compare it to its Sumatran and Bornean brethren.

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The Republicans’ tax bill would let ministers endorse political candidates

By Julie Zauzmer

The tax bill proposed by House Republicans on Thursday includes a proposal to modify the Johnson Amendment, the 63-year-old law prohibiting politicking by churches that has been a favorite target of conservative Christian groups and of President Trump.

The Republicans’ bill would make it legal for ministers and other religious leaders to endorse candidates from the pulpit but stops short of allowing other political participation such as financial contributions from churches to campaigns.

The bill stipulates that a religious institution wouldn’t be found to have violated the law “solely because of the content of any homily, sermon, teaching, dialectic, or other presentation made during religious services or gatherings.”

That’s the protection that some religious leaders, mainly conservative Christians, have requested for years in the name of “pulpit freedom,” even though the Internal Revenue Service has almost never penalized clergy for the content of a sermon.

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Cosmic rays have revealed a new chamber in Egypt’s Great Pyramid

By Mika McKinnon

Cosmic rays may have just unveiled a hidden chamber within Egypt’s most famous pyramid.

An international team led by Kunihiro Morishima at Nagoya University in Japan used muons, the high-energy particles generated when cosmic rays collide with our atmosphere, to explore inside Egypt’s Great Pyramid without moving a stone.

Muons can penetrate deep into rock, and get absorbed at different rates depending on the density of the rock they encounter. By placing muon detectors within and around the pyramid, the team could see how much material the particles passed through.

“If there is more mass, fewer muons get to that detector,” says Christopher Morris at Los Alamos National Laboratory, who uses similar techniques to image the internal structure of nuclear reactors. “When there is less mass, more muons get to the detector.”

By looking at the number of muons that arrived at different locations within the pyramid and the angle at which they were travelling, Morishima and his team mapped out cavities within the ancient structure.

This type of exploration – muon radiography – is perfect for sensitive historical sites as it uses naturally occurring radiation and causes no damage to the structure.

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Senate confirms controversial Trump nominee to appeals court

By Lydia Wheeler

The Senate confirmed a Notre Dame law professor to a Chicago-based federal appeals court Tuesday despite widespread criticism from advocacy groups.

Democratic Sens. Joe Donnelly (Ind.), Tim Kaine (Va.) and Joe Manchin(W.Va.) joined Republicans in the 55-43 vote to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Barrett has claimed that ObamaCare’s birth control mandate is “a grave violation of religious freedom” and questioned the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Roe v. Wade.

Civil rights groups were quick to slam the Senate for approving the Trump pick’s nomination.

“Today’s vote continues the Senate Republicans’ record of rubber stamping all of President Trump’s judicial nominees,” Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said in a statement.

“Our federal courts should be comprised of fair and independent judges who will safeguard the rights of all people in America, but Professor Barrett’s record shows that she will not be such a judge,” she said.

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Scott Pruitt Is Using the Bible as His Guide for Reorganizing EPA’s Science Boards

By Rebecca Leber

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt on Tuesday used the Bible to explain his major changes to the composition of the agency’s independent science advisory committees, which play an important role in guiding and advising the EPA’s regulatory work.

“In the book of Joshua there is a story about Joshua leading the people of Israel into the promised land after Moses passed away,” Pruitt said. “And Joshua says to the people of Israel choose this day whom you’re going to serve. And I would say to you this is sort of like the ‘Joshua Principle’ that as it relates to grants to this agency, you are going to have to choose either service on the committee to provide counsel to us in an independent fashion or you can choose grants, but you cannot do both.”

What the “Joshua Principle” means for the EPA is that scientists who receive agency grants for their research are now barred from serving on any of its independent advisory boards. This opens the door to more industry and political representation on the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, the Board of Scientific Counselors (BOSC), and the Science Advisory Board (SAB). The EPA’s most ardent critics in past administrations cheered the directive, which was announced at a “Live Press Event”—though it was unclear that many reporters were invited to attend. 

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Roy Moore Says Religious Liberty ‘Comes From God,’ Not The Constitution

By Antonia Blumberg

Alabama Senate GOP candidate Roy Moore doesn’t think reporters understand the concept of religious liberty.

Moore was questioned by reporters as he entered the U.S. Capitol to meet with GOP senators on Tuesday. The Senate candidate deflected most of the journalists’ questions, including several about a previous comment he made claiming Muslims shouldn’t serve in Congress.

After several failed attempts to get Moore to comment, a reporter asked: “Why can you talk about these issues in Alabama and not in Washington?”

Moore finally offered a response, saying, “Reporters don’t understand religious liberty and where it comes from.”

He continued: “It comes from God, not from the Constitution.”

Moore, who previously served as the chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, has a long history of placing his Christian faith before the duties of public office.

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An exchange on abortion

Richard Dawkins

24 Oct 2017

 

I had tweeted an invitation to attend lectures in various parts of Britain by Saba Douglas-Hamilton, who grew up among wild African elephants while her father, Iain Douglas-Hamilton was conducting his pioneering studies of their ecology and behaviour, and he and his wife Oria were fighting the poachers. Saba’s series of lectures is in aid of Save the Elephants, the charity founded by Iain, devoted to saving these magnificent animals from extinction (https://sabadouglashamilton.com). Among the responses to my tweet, the following two caught my attention, partly because of their irrelevance

 

 

 

 

 

Replying to @RightWingRebel

 

 

 

This little exchange reminded me of how extremely strongly people can feel about abortion, on both sides of the argument. It is a subject whose importance has been inflated out of all sensible proportion. For many it is the dominant issue that sways their vote, eclipsing things that really matter such as defence policy, economics, social welfare, health care, poverty, global warming and, indeed, conservation.

I have redacted the name of the second tweeter because it seems to be her real name and I don’t wish to embarrass her. I have no such compunction with “RightWingRebel”, who hides behind a pseudonym. But both tweeters seem to me misguided.

I’ll briefly consider the second tweeter and her reply to RightWingRebel. Her argument is the commonest one offered by the pro-choice side. The embryo, she says, is “part of a woman’s body”? Well, it’s a point of view but not one likely to influence “pro-lifers.” They will simply disagree with her presumption, and the question cannot be settled by any objective test. It depends what we mean by “part of.” She’s right if we define an individual as that which is enclosed within one body. But if we define an individual in other ways, the embryo is most definitely a separate individual. Much better to oppose “RightWingRebel” and his type by deploying a different set of arguments which, it seems to me, nobody could thoughtfully disagree with.

So, let me turn to RightWingRebel’s reply to my tweet. It reeks of speciesism. An elephant is a mere “animal” while an unborn person is human. But the elephant has a highly developed nervous system and is beyond reasonable doubt capable of feeling pain. Indeed there is no reason to think an elephant feels pain any less acutely than adult humans do, let alone human embryos. There is even suggestive evidence that elephants feel grief, mourning the death of friends and relatives.

We don’t know whether human embryos can feel pain. But it’s safe to say an early embryo before the nervous system develops can no more feel pain than a pumpkin or a beetroot. If later embryos with nervous systems can suffer, the level of pain of which they are capable must be far less than that of a full-grown elephant with its massive brain. Presumably not even RightWingRebel thinks an embryo can mourn like an adult elephant; or like a human mother who had longed for a baby and is grief-stricken when she spontaneously miscarries, as happens distressingly often; or suffer like a woman forced to give birth to a baby that she never wanted.  

What other arguments might RightWingRebel, or someone of similar intellectual calibre, deploy? The embryo may not be capable of much yet, but it has potential. By killing it you are depriving a potential person of future life. Yes, and in exactly the same way a woman is depriving a potential person of future life every time she refuses unprotected sexual intercourse when fertile. So much for the “potential person” argument.

The “slippery slope” argument has a little more going for it. If we allow the killing of embryos, mightn’t some logic-chopper pop up and say the following: “The baby immediately after it is born is indistinguishable from immediately before it is born. So if you allow abortion, are we not on the slippery slope to infanticide?”

It isn’t hard to answer the slippery slope argument. Pro-choice advocates aren’t talking about late abortion. The question only arises if the life of a mother is imperilled and doctors have a straight choice between saving her and saving the baby. Only a more than usually dogmatic Roman Catholic would ask a doctor to kill a mother to save her baby. All decent people were shocked when, in 2012, Savita Halappanavar died in an Irish hospital because Catholic doctors refused her husband’s pleas to save her life by ending that of her baby (although they knew the baby was going to die anyway). Even the collective of Irish bishops had second thoughts in the wake of Savita Halappanavar’s tragic death.

By the way, Catholic insistence on “personhood” beginning at conception can be demolished by an amusing tease. Confront your Catholic bishop with a pair of identical twins (they split after conception, of course) and ask him which one got the soul: which twin is the “person”, which one the zombie.

The abortion issue bulks too large in many peoples’ minds. Voters have gone so far as to declare that the only reason they voted for an otherwise unconscionable candidate was his opposition to abortion. Otherwise decent people have gone so far as to murder a doctor because he performs abortions. Such murderers sincerely believe in their own righteousness. They go to their punishment rejoicing in the expectation of a great reward in heaven.

You can sort of see how these people could come to their warped conclusion. They honestly and sincerely believe that abortion is murder. The right way to answer them is not to say that a woman has a right to do what she likes to a part of her own body. They will simply deny the premise and accuse her of murder. The right response to people like “RightWingRebel” is show them they are being illogical, speciesist and – oh dear – really rather stupid.

‘Lost’ Salamander Rediscovered After 42 Years

By Stephanie Pappas

A lost species of salamander has been rediscovered alive and well in Guatemala.

The Jackson’s Climbing Salamander (Bolitoglossa jacksoni), a brilliant yellow-and-black amphibian, was last seen in 1975 and feared extinct. But this month, a guard at the Finca San Isidro Amphibian Reserve (also called the Yal Unin Yul Witz Reserve) in the Cuchumatanes Mountains spotted a juvenile of the species while out on patrol. The guard, Ramos León, snapped a photo and sent it to Carlos Vasquez, a curator of herpetology at USAC University in Guatemala, who confirmed its identity.

Vasquez himself had spent more than 3,000 hours hunting for the salamander since 2005, and trained León and his fellow guards on how to search for it.

“We had started to fear that the species was gone, and now it’s like it has come back from extinction,” he said. “It’s a beautiful story and marks a promised future for the conservation of this special region.”

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