Today's Meme: Science Against True Humanity

Have you picked up on today's Twilight Zone meme in the news cycle?

EUROPE: Scientists warn of nanotechnology threat

Morgellons: Terrifying New Disease Reaching Pandemic Status

Kids Made-to-Order: Science Gone Awry

The first two articles may be inadvertently related. Both are serious expositions of perceived public health threats brought on, in theory, by the commercial application of new technologies.

The third article reports on a retired bishop's reaction (on Vatican Radio) to a new fertility clinic in Los Angeles that promises "designer babies."

What nanotechnology threat?

European scientists are starting to identify tangible health concerns associated with the use of nanoparticles in consumer products. [SNIP]

In particular, the committee has focused on a common type of nanoparticle called nanotubes, noting that when they have "similar characteristics as some types of hazardous asbestos...similar inflammatory reactions can be induced by the nanotubes as asbestos."

This threat is serious because a wide range of industries - from food packagers to pharmaceutical companies, textile manufacturers and paint makers - have been examining the potential benefits of using tiny nanoparticles to improve the quality and physical characteristics of their products. Research in this area has been booming and the commercial spin-offs could be very profitable. However the fly in the ointment is health. [SNIP]

... nanotubes, a common form of nanoparticle, could be manufactured into "long thin fibrous forms (length >20 micrometre), rigidity, and non-degradability", in which case they really would resemble asbestos fibres.

If these were then inhaled - say in a factory manufacturing or processing nanoparticles - then a risk of mesothelioma (the cancer usually caused by asbestos) cannot be excluded, the committee paper noted.

Okay, don't breathe in the nanoparticles. Good safety tip. But the next story, on Morgellons, will make your skin crawl:

(NaturalNews) It sounds like something from a bad sci-fi movie. People report the sensation of creatures crawling under their skin, mysterious moving fibers appear, and finally bugs and worms pop out. Unfortunately, these terrifying symptoms are all too true. The people having them are experiencing Morgellons, the latest and scariest in the series of bizarre diseases appearing in the last few years, seemingly from nowhere. Morgellons is now reaching epidemic proportions in the U.S. and abroad.

Morgellons starts with relentless itching, stinging or biting sensations. Cotton-like balls may appear on the body with no reasonable explanation. Soon skin rash develops along with lesions that will not heal. Many sufferers report string-like fibers of varying color popping out through the skin lesions. These fibers can be black, white, red or even iridescent blue. Others report black specks falling from their bodies that litter their sheets and bathrooms. Eventually a variety of bugs and worms begin to find their way out of the body through the lesions. Other accompanying symptoms include hair loss, debilitating and chronic fatigue, hard nodules beneath the skin, and joint pain. [SNIP]

Oakland A's player Billy Koch and his family all have Morgellons. They have been open about their disease and have made some attempt to educate others. Billy had to retire from his baseball career as a result of the disease. Singer Joni Mitchell also has Morgellons, and the disease has negatively impacted her career as well.

The Morgellons story has an Oklahoma tie: one of the first researchers, Randy Wymore, is associated with Oklahoma State University's Center for Health Science. He and others, including the forensics team for the Tulsa Police Department, have done scientific studies on Morgellons fibers.

The team identified the chemical structures of the fibers and compared them to their database of 800 fibers. They found no match, so they used gas chromatography to compare the fibers to their data on 90,000 organic compounds. The fibers did not match up with any of them. They concluded that the fibers were unknown, and not contaminants from clothing sticking to scabs on the lesions as had been thought by those so ready to dismiss what their patients were saying. Wymore and the forensic team concluded that the disease producing these fibers was very real and very frightening.

There's much more, and it's not only worth reading, but I think you owe it to yourself to be at the least aware of the existence of this disease. It's possible that this is the result of bio-weapons research gone awry, or it is the unfortunate result of genetically-modified crop usage.

What it is not is a figment of the imagination.

We mess around with God's created order to our great peril. That's also the theme of Bishop Elio Sgreccia's talk on Vatican Radio about the new fertility clinic:

... The Fertility Institutes, [gives] would-be parents the physical traits they want in their child -- green eyes, for example, or dark skin or blonde hair.

The process screens babies at the first stages of life -- applying technology already used to kill children for sex selection, or who have or could develop genetic defects -- and selects those embryos that meet the tastes of the buyer. The rest are eliminated. The price tag for the process is about $18,000. The Fertility Institutes claims to already have some half-dozen requests for the service. [SNIP]

"... it is about an ethically mistaken operation, and one that wounds the dignity of the offspring, since it is oriented toward manipulating the body, dominating it and transforming it according to one's tastes."

The bishop said that just as it is illicit for a child that has or could develop defects to be eliminated by negative selection, "it is also illicit to make a selection that obeys only the wishes of the parents."

"This is a typical example of science that is not placed at the service of the good, but rather at the desires of those who buy its services; meanwhile those who pay the price in this case are the children," he lamented. "When a norm of creation that is so delicate is violated, the law should take interest in this field."

Bishop Sgreccia said the situation points to the "instinct of manipulation," an instinct that can be detected in the times of Nazism "to a certain degree, since they didn't know everything that is known today." This instinct to manipulate, he affirmed, "continued beyond the abolition of the totalitarian regimes."

I think it could be argued that the eugenics movement came into being well before the Nazi regime, and never really went away. It just went into "deep research mode" and is reappearing, perhaps in time to help spawn new totalitarian regimes, since we are "putting science back into its rightful place."