Explorations: Week of March 2-8, 2004

Week of March 2 - 8, 2007

News Items:

HIV and Monkeys

Back in January, Astronomers Tracked an Asteroid that Seemed to Be Headed fora Direct Collision With the Planet Earth. In Fact, for Several Hours, Many AstronomersWere Convinced the Earth Was Headed for Doomsday

80,000 People in the US Are Afflicted with Sickle Cell Anemia, Mainly African-Americans,Indians, and People from the Mediterranean Area and Now a New Study Shows that20 - 40% of Them Are Very Susceptible to Sudden Death Syndrome

Scientists in England Have Isolated One of the Main Genes That Causes BladderCancer. Bladder Cancer Kills About 130,000 People Worldwide and Now We Are Zeroingin on the Genes Which are Implicated Bladder Cancer

Scientists Have Done a Computer Simulation of The Spread of Genes into the Wild.They Have Found, Much To Their Shock, That It\'s Much Easier for the Genes of GeneticallyModified Plants To Spread Into the Larger Gene Pool

Special Guest: Kurt Gottfried, Professor of Physics at Cornell University and aMember of the Union of Concerned Scientists (www.ucsusa.org).Two Weeks Ago, the Union of Concerned Scientists Issued a Report Stating the theBush Administration Has, In Effect, Cooked the Books With Regards To Science.Now, In Any Industrial Society, You Have to Have Good Science In Order to MakeGood Policy, But What Happens When The Government Starts to Tinker with the ScientificFacts? Specifically, to Censor Reports That Disagree With Its Own Ideology, ToPack Certain Scientific Committees With Cronies, and Also To Deliberately AlterInformation. Today, We\'re Going to Talk About Science and the Credibility of theBush Administration. A Democracy Can Only Function If It Has the Best InformationPossible, Information Which is Scientifically Accurate. But What Happens if theGovernment Begins to Monkey With the Information Itself?