World AIDS day: "Link and Think"
Unfortunately, AIDS is still news, too. Rather than try to encompass all of the huge number of issues connected to AIDS and the HIV virus, I'll try to briefly look at a few, and point to some of the resources I'm aware of.

Some resources

UNAIDS: The Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS, and its search utility.

USAID: Leading the Fight against HIV/AIDS

The U.S. government is the world leader in responding to the global pandemic of AIDS. The U.S. Agency for International Development has dedicated over $1.6 billion for the prevention and mitigation of this epidemic.

We could always do more, and we (all) should have acted sooner, but we do a lot; I think USAID's leadership in fighting HIV/AIDS is one of many things Americans can be very proud of in our country's foreign policy. USAID has specific goals and a strategy distinguishing rapid scale-up countries (Cambodia, Uganda, Kenya, Zambia, chosen because they have high potential for model programs), intensive, and basic countries.

Population Council: Horizons

Horizons is a global operations research program designed to identify components of effective HIV/AIDS programs and policies, test potential solutions to problems in prevention, care, support, and service delivery, and disseminate and utilize findings with a view toward replication and scaling-up of successful interventions.

Plus my wife works for them as communications director and editor of the Horizons Report. (However, all views expressed here are my own.)

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure
As Horizons Project director Dr. Andy Fisher writes:

In developing countries—where more than 90 percent of HIV-infected people live—prevention, care, and support interventions remain the primary tools for dealing with the pandemic.

As you explore any issue of Horizons Report, you'll see (if you didn't already suspect) just how complicated and varied the tragedy of AIDS is around the world: caring for AIDS orphans in Uganda, using other sexually transmitted diseases as proxy indication of HIV risk (they're much cheaper to diagnose), distinguishing migration from sex trade trafficking on the Nepal/India border, and on and on and on. As the Nepal story suggests, and is also particularly clear in many African countries, advancing women's rights is a critical component of HIV prevention. A related point is that "care and support" are in a sense "prevention," too: to the degree victims and orphans of HIV/AIDS are educated and helped to support themselves, they become less likely to transmit the disease because of having to take up prostitution, or because of ignorance.



An ounce of denial prevents a pound of prevention
In a recent article in the Washington Post, "Challenging South Africa's AIDS policy," Jon Jeter notes

More than 4 million South Africans are infected with HIV -- more than in any country in the world. But Mbeki and his governing African National Congress have questioned the link between HIV and AIDS and until recently had refused to administer even discounted antiretroviral medicines, which researchers generally agree are an effective treatment. Mbeki and health officials have raised concerns about the drugs' toxicity.

It may give us bloggers and Internet surfers some pause to learrn that Mbeki acquires many of his views during insomniac web surfing sessions. Check out what you read! Mbeki subsequently convened a panel featuring controversial UC Berkeley scientist Peter Duesberg to provide more support and cover for his newly acquired views on microbiology and epidemiology, and later berated the UN Conference on AIDS for stifling free speech, adding that the true cause of AIDS was simply poverty (Guardian, July 10, 2000: Doctors Despair at Mbeki). For a succinct list of the myths surrounding HIV and AIDS, and brief rebuttals (although unfortunately without references), see the UNAID's HIV, AIDS, and the reappearance of an old myth.

Mbeki has not backed off. In part 5 of a superb, heartbreaking New York Times series about AIDS in South Africa, Death and Denial, Rachel Swarns reports that

In October, Mr. Mbeki suggested that whites, and unwitting black allies, were deliberately overplaying the AIDS epidemic to undermine a black continent on the rise and to perpetuate stereotypes of Africans as "promiscuous carriers of germs."

Earlier this year, he ignited a firestorm by questioning whether AIDS is indeed the nation's biggest killer, as the government's leading medical institute contends. Casting doubt on that assertion, he cited six-year-old data from the World Health Organization that listed H.I.V. as 12th among 29 leading causes of death here.

When a president says such things, why should a largely undereducated people believe otherwise? Reluctance to use condoms, quack remedies, stigmatization of the sick, and the overload and breakdown of public institutions are among the problems common to many developing countries that are only exacerbated when the basics about HIV/AIDS are misrepresented.

As reported in the Washington Post article above, Mbeki's use of the WHO data was rebutted by the South African Medical Research Council, which determined that AIDS deaths were likely undercounted and assigned instead to secondary causes such as tuberculosis. If no additional resources are devoted to fighting the disease in South Africa, as Mbeki's views would seem to make likely, the study suggests that an additional 5 to 7 million South Africans will die by 2010. Certainly not all of these deaths could be prevented even with the greatest plausible efforts -- but many could.



The old five finger discount
An element of the HIV/AIDS story that bothers me is the growing movement to revoke drug patents by government edict. A recent New Yorker article by James Surowiecki (No Profit, No Cure) argued against Health and Human Services secretary Tommy Thompson's threat to break the Cipro patent unless prices were lowered. Surowiecki states the counterargument succinctly: .

Unfortunately, drug development is a long, expensive, and uncertain process. It can take fifteen years and hundreds of millions of dollars to go from finding a bacterial target to putting a drug into production. Now more than ever we want to encourage drug companies to devote their considerable resources to antibiotic R. & D., rather than to another treatment for baldness or impotence. Is this the moment to inform them that if they come up with something of genuine worth, something we vitally need, we may just decide to break their patent?

Drugs don't grow on trees. It takes years of work and billions of dollars to discover them, test them, retest them, hope they aren't blocked by the FDA after all, produce them and distribute them. Patents are vital to making this huge effort worthwhile. Especially for HIV, a virus that is a notoriously mutable moving target, part of our "public health immune system" is having companies interested in continuing to research and produce HIV drugs. And that means a fair rate of return on their investment.

I'm aware that the prices have been too high for many developing countries to afford, and of Oxfam's and other organizations' efforts to change this. But instead of wrecking the patents, and destroying the incentives that have brought us so far so fast in combating HIV, I suggest this: Buy the patents - at a fair price. Bill Gates is already involved in supporting AIDS research and fighting HIV. Large governments and international institutions are as well. This could be done. Alternatively, governments could negotiate to extend other drug patent lifetimes in exchange for HIV patent expirations.

Full disclosure: while I'd like to think I'd feel the same way regardless, I am a Pfizer shareholder. And no, Viagra isn't the only thing they make. I'd like it to stay that way. For more obviously self-serving content about this issue, see Innovation.Phrma.Org. You'll need to hunt somewhere else for the opposition point of view.

posted by Thomas Nephew at 9:34:00 AM -- |    

 

German troops to deploy to Horn of Africa
Die Welt, 11/30/2001: Deutsche Soldaten sollen ans Horn von Afrika

According to WELT sources, a naval unit will put to sea before Christmas. The goal will be the Horn of Africa, to inspect suspicious ships' cargos and protect Allied units. Four German navy (Bundesmarine) frigates will be in a first contingent, among them the "Koln" and the "Emden." [...]

..The ABC-troops and "Fuchs" reconnaissance tanks pledged to the U.S.A. will apparently be stationed in Kuwait... because [it] is close to possible deployment areas ... The 100 man "KSK" special forces unit will join British units in exercises in Oman."

Possible naval bases for the German ships: Djibouti, or (Stern magazine) Berbera, both in the Gulf of Aden. Stern's Mario Dederichs grumbles

The Berbera airport would be suitable for B-52s, which have been forced to use the distant island base of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. No one has asked the Somalis yet what they think of this, but their archenemies, the Ethiopians, are already offering their services as ground troops.

posted by Thomas Nephew at 5:17:00 PM -- |    

 

An alternative to lawyer-client eavesdropping
Police could already apply for and receive warrants to eavesdrop lawyer-client conversations before 9/11. From the Washington Post (11/9/01, Justice Dept. to Tighten Focus on Terrorism):

Under current law, officials can listen secretly to a conversation between a lawyer and client if they have evidence that the two are involved in a crime or a fraud.

"If you have probable cause, you go to a judge. And if the judge agrees, he will authorize the interceptions," said William Jeffress, a defense lawyer in Washington.

So what was the new policy intended to solve? According to Attorney General Ashcroft, the new policy was supposed to help the Justice Department

"shift its primary focus from investigating and prosecuting past crimes to identifying threats of future terrorist attacks, preventing them from happening and punishing would-be perpetrators for their plans of terror."

In my opinion, prevention is the only reason compelling enough to consider. But since lawyers were already required to break confidentiality if they were informed that a specific crime was going to be committed (mycounsel.com), the DoJ rule seems to be aimed at situations where a terrorist chooses a lawyer who is himself or herself a terrorist, in order to complete or continue some criminal act.

This suggests an alternative: randomly assign lawyers to suspects charged with or suspected of terrorism, to prevent the terrorist from handpicking the terrorist (or "merely" criminally unscrupulous) lawyer he or she would prefer. The 6th Amendment only guarantees the right to advice of counsel, not (or at least not specifically) to advice of counsel of one's choice. (We already accept that in knowing that we do not have a "right" to be represented by Alan Dershowitz or Johnny Cochran in a criminal trial.) However, to make this process more palatable, one could imagine "drafting" a group of 5 or 10 randomly selected lawyers, with one of them serving to advise the defendant on the selection of one of the rest as the defendant's attorney. Faced with a choice of essentially no counsel at all (because the new rule destroys confidentiality), and constrained choice of counsel, I think my alternative is at least worth considering. posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:24:00 PM -- |    

 

Military tribunals
For a sequence of good posts on this topic, you might start with this Talking Points Memo by Joshua Micah Marshall. I'm still up in the air on this one (so currently my own poll responses are: tribunal-no, lawyer eavesdrop-no, 5000 interviews-yes). Marshall actually lays out some of the pro arguments so well that you're surprised to learn he's against them, at least as implemented by the Bush order. As I've written earlier, the prospect of a Bin Laden trial is not at all attractive to me, and I engage in some ranting that ends with the simplest alternative of just bombing him.

In his "Lake Effect" blog, Dan Hartung posts a link to the verbatim text of Bush's order. Jeff Jarvis excerpts the order:

"Having fully considered the magnitude of the potential deaths, injuries, and property destruction that would result from potential acts of terrorism against the United States, and the probability that such acts will occur, I have determined that an extraordinary emergency exists for national defense purposes, that this emergency constitutes an urgent and compelling government interest, and that issuance of this order is necessary to meet the emergency."

His take is "Civil Rights? Maybe later." I like Jeff, and I assume the "maybe" was a slip. I've felt like "later," too, but with the nagging and clinching objection: when exactly? When is the emergency -- no ironic quotes, yet -- over? I support hunting Al Qaeda to the ends of the earth, for as long as it takes. But I would think at some point before that's over, the emergency would be as well. The only limitations in the order that I see, skimming it, are that it applies to non U.S. citizens (2a). The rest basically suggests that this will be a new standing order applicable not just to Al Qaeda members, but to anyone conspiring to commit acts injurious to the U.S.

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(edits: 11:05pm; 12/4: link to earlier post) posted by Thomas Nephew at 6:44:00 PM -- |    

 
Iraq: what would we be fighting for?
Last Friday, I wrote about Victor Davis Hanson's National Review article, "The Time is Now," in which he argued that Iraq should be next in the fight against terrorism. I was critical of his reasoning, and said that unless Iraq is shown to be involved in the 9/11 attacks (I'll now add the anthrax attacks to that), I was skeptical of going forward with a war against Hussein and Iraq.

I stand by that view. Yesterday, Steven Den Beste wrote a lengthy piece in which he argued that Europe's attitude about a widening of the conflict can be ignored. As usual, Mr. Den Beste focuses on military capabilities. He's right as far as that goes: Europe's military contributions to the current conflict are trivial, and European help would not be necessary should we decide to attack and defeat Iraq; I'll concede on Pakistan's contribution as well.* But he's wrong, in my opinion, in a more important sense.

Unless Iraq was directly involved in the recent attacks, we would be going to war for an entirely different reason than we are now. Rather than self-defense against a country or organization that has attacked us, the reason that appears to be rising to the top is indeed the pre-emptive "militant antiproliferation" doctrine I suggested last Friday. As Bjorn Staerk noted (without comment) yesterday, a warning has been issued to North Korea that appears to fit into this scheme as well. Let's suppose the doctrine is narrower yet, and that the Bush administration were actually proposing a "militant antiproliferation" doctrine only for undemocratic regimes such as Iraq and North Korea. There would be good long term reasons to support this -- but it leaves China, Pakistan, and arguably Iran on the list for starters. I'm not usually one to raise the "hypocrisy" charge -- so I won't. Instead, I'll just say that defining the boundaries of international conduct for developing weapons of mass destruction, and identifying the countries who go beyond that pale, is almost by definition a matter for international agreement. By the same token, so are sanctions or military actions against violators of such conventions. Both discussions should be (re)initiated, quickly. Simply because the list of potential violator countries is so daunting, the support of all our allies would be crucial in preventing such a doctrine from simply causing a new arms race, where countries on the verge of acquiring deterrent levels of weapons of mass destruction, such as (possibly) Iran or Libya, could well accelerate their efforts.

There is a dreadful practical concern as well. If Iraq does not have weapons of mass destruction, we would presumably have no reason to attack them, unless they support terrorism against us. If they do have such weapons, note that these weapons have not been used -- but we should not be surprised if they were used in a war. We might well provoke what we intend to prevent. A far saner course of action would be what we did with the Soviet Union: maintain vigilance, apply pressure, avoid war, and wait for the totalitarians to collapse.

Mr. Den Beste seems to have different war aims now than when he wrote the persuasive article "What are we fighting for?" shortly after 9/11. In it, he saw Islamic theocracy as the new totalitarian menace. There is a lot of truth in that. But whatever Iraq is, it's not an Islamic theocracy like the Taliban or the "caliphate" dreams of Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. I'm very pleased indeed, as are most Americans, at the successes we've seen in Afghanistan so far. I'm glad the "wind is at our back," (again, via Staerk) but that wind is pushing us towards a victory against Al Qaeda and Bin Laden; we could be tacking against it by extending the war to Iraq. The camps and allies in Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, the Philippines, and elsewhere in the Al Qaeda network are fair game indeed; they're populated with our proven adversaries. But we might do well to all of us step back for a minute, remember the smoking ruins at the Trade Center -- and not dishonor those ruins by widening a war for justice to and safety from the villains who did 9/11 to a broader, more dangerous conflagration.

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Comments are welcome, by all means, anonymous or otherwise: click the "comment" link immediately below. I'm not trying to be quarrelsome. I simply think that decisions about war should be made very deliberately and soberly. I'm also not holding flip-flops or inconsistencies against anyone; goodness knows I'm guilty of them as well.

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* Although I think we might have had a costly fight across that country's air space if Pakistan had wanted that; also, we would have had to keep their nuclear weapons in mind as we positioned our aircraft carriers. posted by Thomas Nephew at 2:26:00 PM -- |    

 

The Minister and the Terrorist
is the title of a good article, by Andrei Markovits, about Joschka Fischer (the German foreign minister) and the German 60's; it's in the November/December issue of Foreign Affairs. (Unfortunately, the online version is is just a 500 word preview.) The terrorist? Joschka Fischer's friend, Hans-Joachim Klein, involved in Carlos the Jackal's attack on the 1975 OPEC meeting. Fischer himself was photographed during a riot in 1973, fist cocked, motorcycle helmet on, confronting a policeman. How did Fischer get from there to the top rungs of power, while his friend wound up on trial for terrorism?

Summing up, Markovits writes that Fischer -- a "Sponti", +/- a Battle of Seattle type, during the 60s -- was quicker than most of his comrades to realize that German society was really opening up and becoming more egalitarian during the 70s. This meant he and others like him could jettison the conceit that Germany was a "fascist" state, and take up the "Verfassungspatriotismus" (constitutional patriotism) preached by key thinkers like Juergen Habermas. Fischer and others like him, Markovits argues, saw Germany's turn to the West, and specifically to America and American culture, as a good thing inoculating it against a relapse into fascism. Others on the left were less enthusiastic, of course.

An interesting claim Markovits makes about Fischer is that he took the Holocaust to heart in a way many of his Palestinian-shawl wearing friends would not; this in turn was directly related to his decision to back the Kosovo campaign. Both with Kosovo and now with Afghanistan, Fischer and Schroeder have accomplished a German version of the "Nixon to China" trick; only they, Markovits argues, could have brought Germany into an active military campaign on the side of the United States. Christian Democratic-led coalitions would have not even tried, in the face of certain mass protests.

It is those student radicals of decades ago, therefore, who will ultimately have bequeathed to their offspring Germany's two dominant features in the twenty-first century: the Westernization of its culture and the normalization of its politics.

posted by Thomas Nephew at 2:19:00 AM -- |    

 

Therapeutic cloners, in their own words
Scientific American "Explore!", 11/24/2001: The First Human Cloned Embryo, by Jose Cibelli, Robert Lanza, and Michael West: The scientists' headline is just about the same as the one in the Guardian a couple of days ago. They may be as interested in hyping this as the media are, of course. I was interested in the sidebar Ethical Considerations, by a Ronald Green and his advisory board:

Although therapeutic cloning could help scientists perfect techniques for reproductive cloning, it could also make much clearer the dangers of trying to produce a human being in this way. There is already evidence that some cloned animals can experience improper gene expression and disruptions in imprinting, the normal pattern of silencing genes not needed in particular tissues. Such problems could discourage prospective parents from using this technology to have a baby. Thus, therapeutic cloning research could actually reduce the likelihood that cloning would be seen as a viable reproductive option.

Lots of "coulds" there, but it seems to soothe the apprehension that we're on that slippery slope to some kind of X-File baby. However, a couple of days ago the same company, (Advanced Cell Technology, ACT) reported that its cloned cows appeared to have grown to healthy adulthood. Moreover, when you return to the main article, there's this:

Studies showing that imprinting is normal in mice cloned from adult cells are currently in press and should be published in the scientific literature within several months.

So Mr. Ethics says in the sidebar, "Don't worry too much, it looks like 'imprinting' might mean no one would want a baby this way," and then Mr. Science says "Cloning done right doesn't have the 'imprinting' problem, or any other we've noticed (at least with mice or cows)."

This isn't sinister, it just seems sleazy. ACT wants to grow stem cell tissue this way, and knows we'll all fret about cloning a human Molly. So it coins the term "therapeutic cloning," and trots out some tame ethicists, who dutifully invite us to cross our fingers that the recipe for cloning full-fledged mice and cows won't work for humans. Why not just say, "We won't do that," and leave it at that? posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:39:00 AM -- |    

 

There must be some mistake, lads
Noticed this headline on the little green footballs "war headlines" news feed: "Next in the firing line: Scotland on Sunday." posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:29:00 AM -- |    

 

Would you step into this room, Your Royal Highness
New York Times: U.S. Pressures Foreign Airlines Over Manifests
The U.S. is insisting everyone provide passenger manifests in advance for foreign arrival flights, or passengers will be put through "extremely rigorous, lengthy searches." Saudi reactions:

Saudi Arabian Airlines and the Saudi Embassy declined to comment on the new requirement. A spokesman for the Saudi Embassy said last month that his country was not in any hurry to sign up for the passenger information system.

"At this time," the spokesman said, "hundreds of Saudi citizens are being detained and questioned with regard to the hijackings. A lot of them are innocent people. That number would probably quadruple if we shared advance information on air passengers with the United States."

They'll probably be in a bit more of a hurry after some Saudi prince gets "extremely rigorously" searched for the first time in his life. As for "a lot" of questioned Saudi citizens being innocent people, that would seem to admittedly leave "some" of them who aren't. At least 15 on September 11, for example. Not that I'd care if four times as many Saudi citizens get questioned, but might this not lead to fewer, better targeted questions, rather than more? Whether or not that's the case: no one's forcing Saudis to fly to the U.S.
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(edited 10:30am) posted by Thomas Nephew at 2:41:00 AM -- |    

 

Kunduz shopkeeper narrowly avoids insight
From a vivid Times of London account of the fall of Kunduz:

Merwis Shakar, 25, a shopkeeper, said: “You would be beaten if you did not grow your beard or if you walked down the street with your head uncovered. The problem with the Taleban is they treated you like you were a woman.”

Pity a boy described in the same article:

At that moment seven Taleban emerged from their hiding place, firing a volley of shots and tossing a hand grenade. Panic swept through the crowd and several people were knocked to the ground in a stampede. The attackers were eventually subdued and led away with their elbows bound behind their backs with their black silk turbans, to join the other prisoners being held in subterranean cells at the Taleban’s former headquarters, a turquoise building with a rose garden south of the city.

The dungeons presented a nightmarish scene: inside one stinking, mud-walled cell, with a ceiling so low that its occupants needed to crouch, were a dozen or more men in deep despair.

In one corner was a shaven-headed boy small enough to stand upright. When asked his name he opened his mouth, but in his terror no words came out.

Many of the Taliban fighters (whether native or Pakistani), were probably kids like this, often straight from some madrassa, a sorry kind of Koran-thumping school that is the only taste of education for many in those parts. I don't intend this note to condemn the war. It is right to destroy Al Qaeda and its Taliban co-conspirators, and thereby defend ourselves. But this child is almost certainly a victim, too. May he make it out alive, and may we not rue that day. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:35:00 AM -- |    

 

Prison uprising put down
This could become huge. A prison riot staged by surrendering Kunduz Taliban has ended in a bloodbath. U.S. aircraft and Northern Alliance tanks fired on rioting Taliban, including many "foreigners," who apparently smuggled some weapons in to their prison in Mazar-E-Sharif. I anticipate this will be trumped up in to a "My Lai" incident, despite the details apparently suggesting otherwise. Batten down the hatches in Islamabad? Reports:

• Time Magazine reporter Alex Perry provides an eyewitness account during the fight: American G.I.s Battle the Taliban

  So there were none or few NA guards?
  There were a few Northern Alliance guards and they were the only ones that had the weapons, but by simple sheer force of numbers the Taliban could overwhelm them. That was a very bad I think. And then we saw a lot of Northern Alliance soldiers fleeing, some of them dropped their guns. I should also say that there are two Reuters journalists trapped inside there.
  
  Any others trapped?
  Maybe some Northern Alliance people as well. Well, almost certainly. It's gone quiet now. Suddenly. But the trouble was that the Taliban had gotten themselves into a position in the fort where they had access to the armory.
  
  Were they kept close to the armory?
  I don't know where they were kept. I think they were kept in the basement. Then stormed out of the basement and stormed Southwest part of the fort where there were six or seven jeeps full of ammunition. That was, in fact, what the Americans were trying to hit. To destroy their supplies [and] provide one almighty explosion that would kill a lot of them.
  
  The NA don't keep their weapons under lock and key?
  No, they're incredibly casual with their weapons. They just lay them against the wall, lie them on the ground. They're always on their sholder or just knocking against the back of a chair [Gun shot]. When you leave in the morning, you put your shoes on, put your hat on and get your gun.

  Pretty riveting report (via Matt Welch). Perry added that he heard that 3,400 Taliban were dead; the 800 figure mentioned early on were the recent arrivals from Kunduz.
  
  
• Guardian: Mass breakout ends in bloodbath

  At least 500 Taliban prisoners broke down their jail doors and tried to fight their way to freedom with Kalashnikov rifles, machine guns and grenades which they had smuggled into the fort, witnesses said.
  
  Footage from a German television crew showed guards on the walls of the compound firing down into crowds of prisoners below. A US special forces soldier was seen calling in air strikes from a satellite telephone. "There's hundreds dead here at least," he said.
  
  "They were all killed and very few were arrested," said Zaher Wahadat, a Northern Alliance spokesman.
  
  

• Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk (MDR Radio, subsidiary or partner of ARD Television, Germany, which had a reporter on the scene): Nordallianz richtet Blutbad an (Northern Alliance commits bloodbath)

  Up to 500 foreign mercenaries have been killed in a prison at the edge of Mazar-E-Sharif. The former allies of the Taliban died in a prison uprising, according to the Northern Alliance. [...]
  
  As the ARD-TV reporter Arnim Stauth reported via satellite telephone, the prisoners detonated hand grenades that they had hidden when surrendering their weapons. They overpowered the guards, took their weapons and fired about themselves. Subsequently there were fights with guards all night long. [...]

  Some of the ARD footage is provided as stills, the .MPG file doesn't work right now.
  

Clearly there's a lot to be sorted out here, and no end of possibilities for ugly explanations and recriminations. Note the headlines: Time avoids the word "bloodbath," the Guardian prefaces it with "Mass breakout ends in," the MDR Radio headline just blames the Northern Alliance. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:39:00 AM -- |    

 

First human egg cell reprogrammed with somatic cell DNA
Which is maybe not what most folks will think when they read this headline from the Guardian (and doubtless many other papers) tomorrow morning: First human embryo cloned. From the Guardian article:

ACT developed its human embryos by somatic cell nuclear transfer. Scientists took human eggs, removed the DNA in the nucleus and replaced it with DNA from a human somatic (body) cell. According to the paper, the somatic nuclei showed evidence of reprogramming - returning to the embryonic state. They saw them return to the pronuclear state, which is only found in fertilised eggs. The nuclei then proceeded to divide into six cells, just as a normal fertilised human egg would do.

So what did not happen was that some natural embryo was plucked apart or scraped at to derive new identical twins. Instead, an unfertilized egg -- no chance to grow up -- had its haploid (one-copy, maternal) DNA removed, and replaced with a person's diploid (two-copy, father and mother) DNA from some somatic (translation: not egg or sperm) cell. That person was indeed cloned, although the report says that the cell division was halted at the six cell stage. (Question: not eight-cell? I guess I don't know human development.)

That is troubling enough, I'll grant, and I second that if this is to be done, it ought to be under extremely strict supervision. There will be a temptation to conjure up a human being this way, with the risk of finding oneself responsible for a pitiable monstrosity. Still, to me this seems preferable to the scenario of "harvesting" natural unwanted embryos, with the potential moral hazard of simply creating such embryos for this purpose. The motive in this case was to create "artificial" stem cells (undifferentiated cells with the potential to form any kind of tissue). The benefits could be great; this development may be a milestone, for example, along the way to replacing a paraplegic's damaged spinal tissue with newly grown tissue that is genetically his or her own. posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:18:00 PM -- |    

 

Highly recommended
Sweet liberty and other photographs compiled by Shiloh Bucher (see also his text site, dropscan) from Reuters, AP: How glad the people of Afghanistan are to be rid of the Taliban. Save this link for any time someone tries to tell you the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan did no one any good. (Via Matt Welch) posted by Thomas Nephew at 2:56:00 AM -- |    

 

German Greens convention supports deployment
I know, I know, in one sense, who cares: Greens decide for war and coalition (Der Spiegel). Germans have been agonizing over a deployment that looks increasingly irrelevant as the Taliban shrinks, Kabul flowers, and Bin Laden's days appear numbered. Still, it appeared last week that the German ruling coalition might break up at this convention, and it didn't, meaning that -- after intense debate -- one of the most liberal governments in the West has decided to support the United States war in Afghanistan. Since it actually isn't over yet in Afghanistan, some of Germany's resources may still come in handy, especially "Fuchs" reconnaissance tanks, and KSK special forces units. And the political benefit is real as well; if the German government had foundered on this question, opposition elsewhere might have perked up, and Bin Laden might still entertain a glimmer of hope in his cave somewhere. (OK, maybe that's a stretch). Summarizing the article would take too much time; suffice it to say the convention basically gave Joschka Fischer a vote of confidence. In a second article, Kommentar: Zu Unrecht verurteilt (Comment: Unjustly condemned), Matthias Gebauer points out:

The Greens dared to let the rank and file vote -- of course, under pressure from Berlin. Nevertheless, the way the discussion was handled is substantially more credible than what the SPD [Socialist party] or CDU [Christian Democrat party] did. The Greens were the only party besides the [former Communist party] PDS to debate a question as a party that all of Germany was debating as well. It's not just the peace movement that questions German participation in a war. Many finally decide, like the Greens, that despite doubts it is right to participate. But both the people and the Greens are not willing to let the discussion itself be cut off.

The Greens may pay a price at the next election: the PDS has become the new German "peace" party, which might siphon away enough votes from the Greens to push them below the 5% mark needed to earn representation in the Bundestag.

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PS: I see Jeff Jarvis has pointed out this post; thanks! If you're interested, here are some prior posts on German and Green responses to 9/11: 11/16/2001, "German parliament upholds Schroeder, deployment", 11/15/2001, "German Greens racing Taliban to oblivion?", 11/09/2001, "Shades of green", 10/02/2001, "I'm gonna study war after all". There are others; use the handy search tool on the left (thanks, atomz.com) if you're interested in searching prior posts. posted by Thomas Nephew at 2:49:00 AM -- |    

 

Saudis trying to help their rats escape sinking ship
Der Spiegel reports Saudis wollen angeblich ihre "Gotteskrieger" zurückholen (Saudis reportedly want to bring back their "holy warriors"), according to the Egyptian Arab daily Al-Hayat.

The government in Riyadh is already in communication with the "relevant capitals," to save the lives of Saudi citizens fighting on the side of the Taliban. This also went for Saudi men trapped in Kunduz by the Northern Alliance, who could possibly become prisoners of war soon. They would be interrogated and put on trial in Saudi Arabia.

With about as much information shared with the U.S. as after the Khobar Towers bombing: none. It's as if the Saudis have something to hide... What is the U.S. government's position on this? On similar actions by the Pakistanis? I've read that General Franks doesn't want us holding prisoners: why not?

I've been glad to see the extremely light U.S. casualties so far, but here is where we're paying a price. By not having our own substantial ground forces attacking Kunduz, we have no leverage at all in determining what happens there: we can't prevent massacres, we can't prevent escapes, we lose access to people who could answer a lot of important questions: who do they know in the U.S., for example. I can understand that we don't want to give the Taliban a rallying cause ("Americans are occupying us") or a concentrated target to shoot at/gas/suicide bomb, but at this point I think we could risk that. American troops might be killed in greater numbers than we've seen to date, but we'd be able to take custody of (or kill) some very, very bad people we might never get our hands on again. posted by Thomas Nephew at 2:15:00 AM -- |    

 

Take the poll
New feature: polls, on the left hand column, below the "powered by Blogger" button. You're right, they're utterly unscientific, but I'm interested nonetheless: what do you think about some of the issues I've been following? posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:32:00 AM -- |    

 

Rats will desert sinking ship
Via little green footballs, a Stratfor analysis: Afghanistan: Extremist Diaspora Will Fuel Expanded Conflict:

One side effect of this dispersal may be the foundation of a second network of Islamic extremists. Just as the Soviet war against Afghanistan -- and the subsequent scattering of fighters -- produced a worldwide network of extremists, the American war in Afghanistan will produce a secondary network, one that might not be centered around Osama bin Laden.

Stratfor seems to be an upscale, subscription-based "debkafiles.com", with a little less flavor of "I just talked with my Mossad contacts," and more of an "I wish I were writing for the Economist" effect. I'm not sure where Stratfor is going with this article: one might read it as yet another handwringing "con" in some kind of "environmental impact analysis" of going after Al Qaeda. My own take -- no surprise -- is that this is merely why none of these guys should get out of Kunduz, unless it's in a U.S. helicopter to a U.S. prison.

But yes, it's inevitable some of them will get away; Stratfor estimates (well, really it just guesses) that 1,000 to 2,000 will escape, and identifies Chechnya and Somalia as the most hospitable destinations. Fine, we'll find them there. I can live with this; an upside of "baby terror networks" is that they have to find their own money, weapons, support, and so forth. Whether they apply to Bin Laden for funding or not, the main thing is, there should be fewer of them.

Still, I hope the CIA et al are getting a lot of names, faces, addresses etc. out of Kabul, Mazar-e-Sharif, etc. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:02:00 AM -- |