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Post by prairiegardens on Dec 5, 2016 14:37:53 GMT -5
I haven't checked this out, the quote is from the gardening column in a Toronto newspaper.
Weirdest new vegetable: Nanobionic spinach. Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientists claim that this bizarre hybrid can detect explosives nearby and send a message to a cellphone. Yes, really. So can we expect to see spinach salad bars set up in airport security checks?
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Post by shoshannah on Dec 5, 2016 15:35:25 GMT -5
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Post by walt on Dec 6, 2016 14:53:25 GMT -5
Might add a little crunch. And many vegetarians could use more iron in their diet.
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Post by steev on Dec 6, 2016 18:23:30 GMT -5
I'm not even used to GMO's yet; this "stuff" is happening way too fast.
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Post by blueadzuki on Dec 6, 2016 19:25:53 GMT -5
Not sure if I am but I HAVE accepted that nanobiotics of some sort are probably part of our medical future. As far as I am concerned, if there is every actually a "cure" for cancer, it's probably going to involve tiny medical nanobots that are allowed to travel constantly through our bodies and eliminate tumors when they are still only a few cells (far earlier than we can deal with them now). |
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Post by steev on Dec 6, 2016 22:38:00 GMT -5
I accept the potential medical benefits, but I'd be happier had we not put so many carcinogenic "advances" (pesticides/herbicides) into the ecosystem, in the first place. I have serious reservations about this "anything we come up with is great; we can work out the bugs later, after it's been released into the ecosystem" mode of behavior. Call me a pessimist, but I'm just not that sure that we can stay ahead of the ill-effects of our "improvements". I won't even start to bitch about the probable profit-driven availability of high-tech medical care.
I may be naive, but isn't it better not to cause harm, than to maybe cure it? Granted, that's not as potentially profitable, but isn't it less harmful?
As for the army, I thought mainly the less-educated, poorer classes were serving it, now that there is no draft to bring in the sons of the middle class, given that the sons of the upper class could always score deferments.
I don't think I need to list the numerous currently influential right-wing, deferment-sucking chicken-hawks, aside from our President-elect.
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Post by prairiegardens on Dec 7, 2016 2:26:56 GMT -5
I'm with Steev on this one. It seems we all deal with cancerous cells daily and generally control them just fine; but the environmental stresses of the food we eat, water we drink, air we breathe, even for some the various things we put on our bodies or use in our houses can eventually simply overcome us.
Just finished watching a docuseries on cancer, interviews with professionally trained medical doctors and researchers mostly from the U.S. and Europe who have been having lots of success treating cancers in somewhat other than standard ways. One doctor in Texas who has been having a markedly better than usual results with his methods for about 30 years has just recently won the latest in a series of court battles initiated by the Texas Medical association - not sure if that's the official name but it's who is trying to get him unlicensed simply because he doesn't follow the " normal" protocols, never mind that he gets much better results not using them than they do with them. There seems to be a whole lot of that going on, it's much worse I think in the US than in Europe but happens everywhere.
Big pharma wants us to depend on it the way Monsanto wants us to depend on them for our food. And the link is of course tightening with Bayer about to swallow Monsanto. Bayer , iirc, is the outfit fighting the idea in Europe that neonicotinoids have anything whatever to do with bee colony collapse disorder. I tend to think they care more about profit than people so they like to promote the idea that technology can fight disease better than our bodies can. Sometimes that's true, but I'm not convinced it's true anywhere near as often as they'd like us to believe.
Healthy food can go a very long way to help us keep in good shape, even if some of us like me are now realizing the consequences of being a tad careless for too long about it. Who knew that so much of what we eat is so very bad for us 20 years ago? I just found out that the lids of takeout coffee cups leach plastic..not so much if the liquid is cold but lots when it's hot, and who likes cold coffee?!!
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Post by walt on Dec 7, 2016 16:03:58 GMT -5
Last week on NPR there was a story on a study newly released, showing that some new, expensive, anti-cancer medicines didn't improve quality of life nor length of life. In other words, they were worthless.
In Niger, 35 years ago, I saw how western medicine was increasing life expectancy and releave pain, prevent diseases. etc. Now I see in the west that the methods that brought us better health aren't as profitable as cutting corners. So corners are cut.
And in places our drinking water isn't any safer than Niger's was. No one knows how many places because if we found out, it would be expencive to fix. Cheaper to not worry about it.
And any high school chemistry lab could check water safety. Why isn't it routine to have students bring in samples from home to test? Because people don't know they can take control of things like this. Yes, I was a high school chemistry teacher for a couple of years. I wish I'd known about the potential problem then and done something, at least locally.
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Post by prairiegardens on Dec 7, 2016 16:51:33 GMT -5
We will all turn into our own version of the - was it the 6 million dollar man? Steve Austin? I forget - anyway all robotic bits and pieces... Some days it would be handy! It would solve the problem of needing help to get stuff done if nothing else!
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