Genetic Engineering: What is Genetic Engineering?

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Genetic Engineering: What is it, how does it work, what are the limitations? Read more on the powerful, life saving and deadly potential of genetic engineering.  Watch video on Genetic Engineering. 290,000 views of this article.

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The Island of Bolay - Chapter 1 - novel about germ warfare, terrorist threat

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Chapter 1 of Island of Bolay - thriller by Patrick Dixon. Published originally by Harper Collins, sold in Airports and bookshops, now available on Kindle.  Germ warfare agents have fallen into terrorist hands. An air ambulance doctor is soon running for his life, after discovering the deadly truth...

Side room E4 on Elizabeth Ward was barely four metres square and packed with people in masks, gloves and green gowns: a full surgical team of Consultant, registrar and two junior doctors. The medical registrar, head of microbiology and ward sister also stood by.

Professor Richard Robbins pulled down his mask, stripped off his gloves, dropped them carefully into the yellow plastic-lined bin for biohazard waste. He removed his bifocals. No one else moved.

“Worst I've ever seen. Usually one every two or three years at the most. But four cases of necrotizing fasciitis in two weeks. What do you think Gerald?”

The microbiologist piped up from the back in faltering, hesitant speech.

“I, er, well, it is unusual to get a cluster like this - every ten or twenty years. Perhaps there is a hidden vector.”

“A carrier?  But can anyone survive such a virulent strain without it being obvious they are infected?”

“Possibly. As you know we carry strep in our throats. It lives there without a problem until the delicate balance of protection and growth is disturbed. Only then does it invade.”

“And you swabbed the throats of every person in the hospital after the last case?” asked the Professor.

“ Yes sir. No sign.”

“Do it again.”

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The Island of Bolay - Chapter 2 - novel about germ warfare, terrorist threat

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Chapter 2 of Island of Bolay - thriller by Patrick Dixon. Published originally by Harper Collins, sold in Airports and bookshops, now available on Kindle.  Germ warfare agents have fallen into terrorist hands. An air ambulance doctor is soon running for his life, after discovering the deadly truth...

The 10.45        Zakintos, Greece

As John Bradley hung up,  thirty year old Dr David Miller strode into the tiny office of Zakintos Island hospital, slammed the door, stuffed the stethoscope in his pocket, flung his powerful six foot frame in the chair. He threw his broad feet on the walnut desk facing the wall and pulled a cigarette.  He was sweating in the afternoon heat, angry, brown hair all over the place, dark brown-green intensely alert eyes. He tore at collar and tie and pulled out his phone.

Mark Taylor, nineteen years old yesterday, was lying in a room chock full of old men, surrounded by crowds of women in black and numbers of children. Just one nurse for the whole corridor and she spoke no English. Julia Cousins, the flight-nurse, was cleaning Mark up - it was a hellish place to be sick. Families had to do their own nursing, best as they could.

Miller tried to dial Hugh, the pilot of Air Ambulance but the phone was engaged.

The white plaster wall by his right hand showed the red flecks of dead mosquitoes.  A beautifully carved wooden icon of Christ hung from a nail by the shuttered window.  Amanda would have liked it. The room reeked of disinfectant and pipe tobacco.

Miller meddled with the unlit cigarette, broke it twice and threw it in the bin.  He threw the other six away with the empty packet. A baby cried in the corridor.  For the third time that week he vowed he would never have another smoke. He watched as his shoes shed films of dust on newspapers which lay on the desk.  He glanced at the headlines. Troops guarding the Golden Dome of Jerusalem. Ten Muslims dead at the entrance, shot by Israeli soldiers. Yet another flare-up in a bloody month which had seen more deaths in Israel than in the previous five years.  Syria and Iran piling on the pressure again.

This was routine air ambulance. Not so big a challenge after three years as an army medic. Should have been killed outright. The boy had skidded off a scooter on gravel. No helmet. No shoes. Shorts and a shirt. Just like sixteen others in the last four months. Scooters should be banned.

Coming too fast round a hairpin,  he’d swerved against a wall, bounced into the road, slid along his bare side, ended in a ditch. Several broken vertebrae, massive grazes, skin missing down right leg and arm, possible skull fracture, three broken ribs on right chest wall. Lucky to be alive.  It was immoral of these bike companies not to warn people.  They should make them take helmets as condition for insurance if nothing else.

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The Island of Bolay - Chapter 3 - novel about germ warfare, terrorist threat

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Chapter 3 of Island of Bolay - thriller by Patrick Dixon. Published originally by Harper Collins, sold in Airports and bookshops, now available on Kindle.  Germ warfare agents have fallen into terrorist hands. An air ambulance doctor is soon running for his life, after discovering the deadly truth...

Julia Cousins had spent the last fifteen minutes fixing up a drip and preparing to transfer Mark onto a stretcher, the most hazardous manoeuvre of the whole journey.
She put her hand on his curly hair: “Mark, we're just going to slip this special frame under you, half from each side, and bolt it together above your head and your feet, to scoop you up from the bed.”
She looked at him and turned to Miller. “How much pethidine did you give him?  He's very sleepy.”
“Almost unconscious. Let's get going.”

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Future of Stem Cell Research - Creating New organs and repairing old ones. Trends in Regenerative Medicine, anti-ageing research, AI. Future pharma, clinical trials, medical research, heath care trends, and biotech innovation.Health care keynote speaker

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Keynote on embryonic stem cells and adult stem cells - biotech company progress.  How stem cells are being used to rebuild old organs or even to create new ones in ways that would have seemed like science fiction just five years ago.

Should you invest in stem cell technology, stem cell organ repair and organ regeneration?

Treatment using adult stem cells for spinal cord injuries - or stroke, or heart damage.

Impact on ageing, health care, life expectancy, medical advances, pensions, retirement and lifestyles.  Read FREE SAMPLE of The Truth about Almost Everything - his latest Futurist book.

* "How AI Will Change your life - A Futurist's Guide to a Super-Smart World" - Patrick Dixon's latest book on AI is published in September 2024 by Profile Books.  It contains 38 chapters on the impact of AI across different industries, government and our wider world, including the impact of AI on health care, Pharma, stem cell research and biotech innovation.

Read more: Future of Stem Cell Research - Creating New organs and repairing old ones. Trends in Regenerative Medicine, anti-ageing research, AI. Future pharma, clinical trials, medical research, heath care trends, and biotech innovation.Health care keynote speaker

The Future of the Biotech Industry

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What is Biotech? The Future of Biotech. Are biotech companies good investments? Future of biotechnology, genetics, health care, pharmaceutical industry. Dr Patrick Dixon lecture to biotech venture capital investors about future medicine and health care, gene therapy, biotechnology, and the pharmaceutical industry.

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What is Biotechnology? - Video on biotech innovation, genetics and health care - Keynote Speaker

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Biotechnology is the use of the science of genetics: alteration of genetic code by artificial means, and is therefore different from traditional selective breeding. Biotechnology makes the whole digital revolution look almost as nothing. Digital technology changes what we do.

Biotechnology has the power to change who we are. Biotechnology will alter the basis of life on earth - permanently - unless controlled. This could happen if - say - mutant viruses, or bacteria, or fish or reptiles are released into the general environment.

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Germ warfare - mutant bugs could wipe out human life - Biotech Keynote Speaker

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The thought of catching a cold and then getting cancer is horrifying. Such a scenario has come a big step closer - British scientists trying to make new mutant superbugs out of human cancer genes and viruses closely related to strains causing common cold. Although designed to help find cancer cure, the possibility of accidental escape is alarming.

Even more worrying is the thought that a hundred similar or more dangerous experiments may be going on that we have yet to find out about with military or terrorist use as biological or chemical weapons of mass destruction.

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Future Stem Cell Research: New Tissues, Organs. Future of Biotech Keynote Speaker

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Bone marrow and other tissues could repair your brain, spinal cord and heart and cure diabetes or old-age blindness. 

Clinical trials of many kinds are continuing, after a range of successful studies of stem cell use in animals.  Comment in 2008 with very accurate predictions.

Adult stem cells promise astonishing medical advances and investor returns while embryonic stem cells and therapeutic cloning raise major ethical, legal, and image problems.

Many ethical questions remain about use of stem cells from aborted foetuses, but reseachers are discovering the huge potential of stem cells from a patient's own body.

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Gender selection - is it right to chose a boy or a girl?

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Should gender selection be allowed for parents wanting a baby boy or girl? Gender selection is widely practised around the world. Gender selection is something many parents want: to decide the sex of their children. Gender selection is easy to do but raises huge moral / ethical issues. Gender selection can take place by encouraging in vitro fertilisation (IVF) only by sperm carrying the x or y chromosome. Gender selection can take place immediately after IVF when embryos are tested before implantation. Gender selection can take place when the developing foetus is tested, either genetically or by looking at ultarasound images, with abortion of a foetus if the "wrong sex". Gender selection can take place after birth when one or both parents kills their own baby.

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Cultural Differences in View of Science and Progress

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There is a huge cultural gap between different world views on things like technology and science.

Popular views of science, ethics and morality.

Take for example the perspective of the Taliban or those living in the United States.

But we also see big variations within nations, expecially in ethical debates about human or animal experiments, or fusion of their different characteristics.

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Gene Tests for Insurance – Ethical and Legal Issues

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Why gene screening for insurance will be allowed to prevent fraud against life insurance companies.

Over the counter gene testing kits create life insurance risks for underwriters, because personal and private gene test results are not available to the insurer when assessing life insurance premiums.

The risk is that widespread requirements for gene tests by insurers could meant that people with certain genes are unable to get life or health cover, which in turn may impact things like eligibility for mortgages.

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Human genes into pigs to make hearts for people - Safe? Right?

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Xenortansplants - safety, reliability and ethics. There are three fundamental questions to ask regarding the use of organs from "humanised" animals to treat medical disorders. Are they safe? Do they work? Are they ethically right to use?  What are xenotransplants?

Archive 1997 - Updated 1999.

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Monarch Butterfly deaths from GM pollen - Futurist keynote speaker and advisor on global trends such as biotech and GM food

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Monarch butterlies may be threatened by pollen from genetically modified maize. That's the conclusion of a new Monarch Butterfly survival study by Cornell University published in Nature (Archive 21 May 1999).

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The Future of Biotechnology - pharma and health trends, biotech keynote speaker

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Indian biotechnology sector is expected to become a five billion-dollar (around Rs 23,400 crore) industry by 2010.Two children on gene therapy trial in France develop cancer. Inkjet printers to print living structures. Growing Organs on Hosts. Recent Stem Cell Research.

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