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XXThe_BonzXX
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Name: Bonnie
Birthday: 1/3/1981
Gender: Female
Interests: Right now I am keenly interested in getting out of the hum drum routine of existence and really doing the gospel as called to by God.
Expertise: Since Mom wasn't listed as a occupation or industry I list it here as one of my many areas of expertise.
Message: message meEmail: email me
Member Since:
6/15/2005
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| I've said it before but I gotta say it again: Why doesn't money have braille on it? Atm's have braille on them. But here's the thing, how does the blind person using the atm know what denomination the bill is that comes out? I guess you'd just have to be good at math. I'm blind, I got out $100 and got 5 bills back, must be twenties. I guess that solves the riddle. No, it really doesn't. I know blind people have special ways of folding their money to differentiate but still.... Why doesn't money have braille on it? It needs braille on it, dang it. | | |
| it's done... the second draft of my first screenplay is complete... need to proofread it and stuff... but dang I am so tired of looking at it! | | |
| why doesn't money have braile on it? | | |
| I have come to strongly believe that we need to pull out of Iraq. While I know many Christians who support the war, I don't think as Christians that we should. We wrestle not with flesh and blood. Eph 6:12 And let's not forget ' Thou shalt not kill'. Exo 20:13 So many Christians just adopt the attitudes of the majority of other Christians around them without stopping to think what those attitudes really say. Jesus said the world would know we were his disciples by our love for one another (John 13:35) not our Christian worldview. Anyway all that said, I found an article that outlines policy that I think political leaders should take a closer look at. Here it is. | | |
| Britain Clears Way for 'Designer Babies' Free of Breast Cancer Gene
Thursday , April 26, 2007
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LONDON —
Two couples whose families have been ravaged by breast cancer are to become the first to screen embryos to prevent them having children at risk of the disease, The London Times reported.
Tests will allow the couples to take the unprecedented step of selecting embryos free from a gene that carries a heightened risk, but does not necessarily cause, the cancer. The move will reignite controversy over the ethics of embryo screening.
An application to test for the BRCA1 gene was submitted yesterday by Dr. Paul Serhal of London's University College Hospital. It is expected to be approved within months as the Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority (HFEA) has already agreed in principle.
• Read the original report in the London Times.
Opponents say that the test is unethical because it involves destroying some embryos that would never contract these conditions if allowed to develop into children. Even those that did become ill could expect many years of healthy life first.
Some critics fear that the tests move society farther down a slope that will lead ultimately to the creation of "designer babies" chosen for looks or intelligence.
• Learn more about prevention and treatment in FOXNews.com's Cancer Center.
However, the first patients say that the technology will allow them to spare their children a devastating genetic inheritance. One couple in their 20s, who would only be named as Matthew and Helen, have lost three generations to breast cancer.
Last May, the watchdog ruled it acceptable for doctors to screen embryos for genes such as BRCA1, which raise the risk of cancer in adulthood by between 60 and 80 percent. Embryo screening was previously restricted to genes that carry a 90 to 100 percent chance of causing disease.
The application is the first to be made under the new regime after a year of research to identify the precise mutations that affect Serhal's patients. Approval is likely in three to four months, once the HFEA has confirmed that the tests are reliable.
Women with a defective BRCA1 gene also have a 40 percent risk of ovarian cancer. It is linked to prostate and breast cancer in men, who can also inherit it benignly and pass it on to their daughters.
Serhal said that objections to screening ignored the harrowing family histories of the patients he is seeking to help, who have a chance to ensure their children avoid similar experiences.
"We are talking about a killer that wipes out generation after generation of women," Serhal said. "You can have a preventive mastectomy, but this is traumatic and mutilating surgery that does not eliminate the risk.
"What we are trying to do here is to prevent this inherited disease from being a possibility in the first place. At least with these people's children, we can annihilate the gene from the family tree."
Genes have also been identified that raise the risk of conditions such as obesity, heart disease and mental illness. More than one gene, however, is usually involved and the HFEA will not currently approve screening for those.
Supporters of screening point out that patients must use IVF even if fertile and many couples carrying defective genes will not choose this option. The HFEA code of practice also makes it clear that screening is allowed only for serious conditions.
When the license is awarded, the couples will have IVF. This will allow a single cell to be removed from the embryo at the eight-cell stage and be tested for the defective BRCA1 gene. Only unaffected embryos will then be transferred to the womb.
Though the HFEA decided last May to accept applications to do this after a public consultation was supportive, it has taken Serhal's team a year to develop a robust test for the specific mutations in the gene that each family carries.
The HFEA will not reconsider the ethics of screening, but will ask independent experts to review the reliability of the tests before awarding a license.
"We are very confident because the HFEA has already said in principle that this is OK," Serhal said.
The HFEA said: "Each application for conditions such as this must be considered on a case-by-case basis because of the difference in the way that families are affected by these conditions."
Josephine Quintavalle, of the embryo rights group Comment on Reproductive Ethics said: "There has to be a better way of curing disease than this. It is very likely that in the not-too-distant future there will be a way of treating breast cancer that doesn't rely on eliminating the carrier instead of curing the disease."
Last year, the Times revealed the conception of Britain's first "designer baby," who was screened as an embryo for inherited cancer. The baby has since been born healthy and free from the gene carried by her mother that would have given her a 90 percent chance of developing retinoblastoma, an eye tumor | | |
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