Safely Cloned Livestock In Our Food Supply?

Livescience has an article posted today reporting that “food from cloned animals is safe to eat,” according to the FDA.  This is after 5 years of study.  Evidently someone, somewhere, has been eating cloned meat for 5 years and not grown any extra appendages.  Call me cynical, but I don’t buy any of it. 

The FDA has been studying Tylenol for what, 50 years now?  Ibuprofen for 20?  And just last week they announced (and this is something pharmacists told me 10 years ago when I was a pharmacy technician) that tylenol can endanger your liver and ibuprofen can cause bleeding stomach ulcers. 

So now, all of a sudden, after only 5 years of study, the FDA announces this:

FDA believes “that meat and milk from cattle, swine and goat clones is as safe to eat as the food we eat every day,” said Stephen F. Sundlof, director of the FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine.

I’m not about to start taking my nutritional advice from a veterinarian.  But that’s entirely beside the point.  We need more than five years of research to know if this is going to be safe.  And testing on the nation’s food supply is not something we should take lightly.  And they may not even label the food as cloned:

Labels should only be used if the health characteristics of a food are significantly altered by how it is produced, said Barb Glenn of the Biotechnology Industry Organization.

“The bottom line is, we don’t want to misinform consumers with some sort of implied message of difference,” Glenn said. “There is no difference. These foods are as safe as foods from animals that are raised conventionally.”

Those in favor of the technology say it would be used primarily for breeding and not for steak or pork tenderloin.

Cloning lets farmers and ranchers make copies of exceptional animals, such as pigs that fatten rapidly or cows that are superior milk producers.

“It’s not a genetically engineered animal; no genes have been changed or moved or deleted,” Glenn said. “It’s simply a genetic twin that we can then use for future matings to improve the overall health and well-being of the herd.”

Right.  I’m not yet ready to gamble my health on your semantics.  Clones are, by definition, genetically engineered.  And as such, they are prone to errors.  Less so in the first generation, but inevitably errors will be produced.  (The exact word for this phenomenon escapes me at the moment, but errors in cloning, as in computer programming, are cumulative and grow at an accelerating rate.) 

Not to be too cynical, but I’d say they’re rushing to judgement on this.  And I’d still like to see who’s been eating the meat of clones’ offspring for the past 5 years before I believe the study they mention is applicable at all. 

Word Shoot

This is so much more fun than any conventional typing program.  I think it’s a good way to increase your typing facility.  And so far I have the #4 score on medium–105,790.  Think you can beat me? 

Try it. 

Loot

Hope you had a good Christmas.  I know I did!  My pork pies came out very tasty indeed, and of course Norm & I got a lot of loot.  Our families are just too good to us.  (I have to say that because Mom is reading-ha ha.)  Seriously, though, we are a bit spoiled considering we’re in our 30′s.  Two items I was very happy to receive:

Both the Movie & the Soundtrack to The Producers (so now you don’t have to be subjected to more clips here on the website) and Thunderstruck by Erik Larson.  Having loved Devil In The White City as much as I did, I can’t wait to dig into this book. 

Norm’s Mom surprised the hell out of me by giving me a Garth Brooks Concert DVD set I’d been eyeballing in the store a few weeks ago.  Of course, I also got a couple of games, most notably Call Of Duty 3 and Destroy All Humans 2.  (If my ears aren’t deceiving me, a suitably British character in DAH2 is voiced by none other than Mr. Rupert Giles of Buffy The Vampire Slayer fame, Mr. Anthony Stewart Head.  Ahhh, wiki & Google confirm it.  Must be true.  Ahem.)

Give me a couple of weeks and I’ll review them for you.  Now I have to spend some time getting ready for the new year.  I hope the Top Hat & Diaper costume still fits. 

Springtime For Hitler

Need a smile over the Christmas Weekend?  Watch this and have a good time.  I’m enjoying this movie way too much to be normal.

Merry Xmas

Love you all.

–Jamie

(Will Farrell is great in this next one.)

Will Someone Tell The President . . .

That an end to the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy would solve his military recruitment problems overnight?  I honestly am beginning to think that people are keeping this information from him.  With the recent discussion of increasing our troop levels in Iraq (how about securing Afghanistan first–they’re the ones who attacked us and we still let them run their poppy fields), it would seem to me that the logical logistic solution is to tap the resources already available for recruitment: homosexuals who want to serve but can’t because of a nonsense policy. 

We’ve all heard the stories of how we dismissed 14 arabic language translators right when we needed them the most solely for their sexuality.  There are a number of ex-servicemen and women who would likely reenlist if they were allowed to be open about their sexuality. 

Look at the latest Zogby poll results. 

A recent poll from Zogby International and the Michael D Palm Center shows that US military personnel are increasingly at ease serving with openly gay colleagues.

The poll reveals that 73 percent of military members aren’t bothered by lesbians and gays. Nearly one in four (23 percent) service members report knowing for sure that someone in their unit is lesbian or gay, including 21 percent of those in combat units.

But how can that possibly be if we have such a deleterious effect on “unit cohesion?”  (Note sarcasm.)  Simply put: we don’t. 

The two objections still voiced by opponents of ending the policy — the impact on readiness, and on unit cohesion and morale — have been all but exploded.

Military readiness means having the best and the brightest, not kicking out Arabic translators, surgeons and helicopter pilots just because they’re gay, as has happened in recent years.

Unit cohesion and good morale thrive when team members bond tightly, sharing details of their lives and friendships. Increasingly, young adults — the backbone of our armed services — have gay friends and support their serving openly.

Additional evidence of the non-impact of openly serving gays can be found in the history of gays serving side-by-side in the Israeli army for decades. 

Recently the number 40,000 has been passed around the media as a speculative figure for how many “more troops” will be needed if we proceed with “a surge.”  Interestingly enough, Soulfource’s own figures indicate that there are enough potential GLBT soldiers to completely fill that need. 

An estimated 65,000 GLB soldiers currently serve in silence. An estimated 41,000 citizens would serve in the armed forces if they did not have to lie in order to do so. Over 10,000 soldiers have been discharged under DADT. Training replacements for those discharged, including more than 80 critical linguists, has cost the American taxpayers at least $364 million.

I find it an immensely gratifying show of courage and integrity that there is such a strong movement within the gay ranks to serve a country that paints us as less than full citizens.  Just as we gays & lesbians love each other with the same strength and passion as straight couples, so do we love our country with the same strength and desire to protect it as any straight person does.

DADT is an farce of a policy signed by Bill Clinton that has no place in such a nation in dire need of security resources.  There are service-ready men and women just waiting for the day they can be true to themselves while at the same time serving the country they love so well.  The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN) has been working to repeal the ban since its institution in 1993.  You may sign the current petition to lift the ban here. 

For more information you can check the Frontlines blog, which recently posted the Top Ten DADT stories of 2006 (a rallying cry by the media for the policy’s repeal), or check out Soulforce’s Right To Serve campaign.  Here are a couple of video clips about this past year’s Soulforce campaign:

These kids should make you prouder than a thousand gay celebrities ever would.   Mister President, let them serve.