BIOTECH LINKS

• MEDICAL BIOTECHNOLOGY

  Last week we looked at Bioethics, and now we'll dive right into the hottest topic related to it: Biotech in medicine. Of course one big issue is cloning human beings, but even the question of producing "spare parts" for human beings is problematic for some people.

  Here's a link to a movie (CNN - Nov 2007) about how an inkjet printer is used in "spare body parts" research.

  Click => Movie
   

• And here's a story from Nov 17 2007) on a yet another cloning breakthrough.
  
  Click => Breakthrough in primate cloning
   

• But apparently not everyone is soooo.... happy about the progress being made.
  
  Click => Dolly scientist abandons cloning
   

• In May 2005 a British team seems to have made some progress in the area of cloning human embryos:

  Click => BBC Story: UK Scientists Clone Human Embryo
   

• And much in Apr 07, there was another story about how progress had been made in using stem cells to produce part of a human heart.

  Click => BBC Story: Heart valve grown from stem cells
   

• There are also some quite strange concepts related to this effort, such as the idea to mix human cells with cow cells "just to see what happens" ...!
  
  Click => BBC Story: Plan to create human-cow embryos
   

• THE POLITICS OF CLONING
  Even the United Nations is concerned with the issue of human cloning. Some countries want to ban it completely, but others want to permit therapeutic cloning while banning reproductive cloning.
  
  A vote was held on 08 March 2005 that produced a non-binding declaration to ban all human cloning.
  
  Please read the following article from the BBC about the vote.
  Click => UN vote urges human cloning ban
  
  If you're interested, here's the press release issued by the UN about the vote.
  Click => UN Press Release that announces the General Assembly's adoption of the UN's Declaration on Human Cloning.
  
   

• ESSAY
  Please write a short essay that explains your opinion about Biotech in the field of human medicine.
  Click => HERE
   

• GLOSSARY (with listening sections)
  Click => U.S. National Human Genome Research Institute's Glossary of Genetic Terms
   

• GRAPHICS
  Click => Access Excellence of the U.S. National Health Museum
   

• NEWS
  Click => www.biospace.com
  

GRAMMAR LINK

• Present Perfect (Continued)