Cloning = Reincarnation?; Bad vs Good Forgeries; Tobacco, The Miracle Drug

[jenk]

Stem Cell Research and the 'Buddhist Way'

The July/August issue of Foreign Policy includes "The Great Stem Cell Race," by Robert L. Paarlberg, a Wellesley political scientist who analyzes Asia's quest to lead in stem cell research.

One of the region's biggest advantages is the much lower cost of employing research talent. Biotechnology research scientists in China are employable at one-fifth to one-tenth the cost of comparable American talent, and China now has a growing pool of capable researchers, many with U.S. training. Asia's scientists also benefit from strong state support. Even free-market-oriented Singapore has spent $500 million on its "Biopolis Asia," a two-million-square-foot biomedical campus that opened in 2003. ...

Nor do Asian scientists face as much cultural resistance to their work as their colleagues in the West. In Confucian and Buddhist societies, there are fewer religious inhibitions to the destruction of microscopic embryos. Throughout Roman Catholic Europe and in much of Christian America, religious authorities teach that a fertilized egg is already a person.

In Confucian tradition, the defining moment of life is birth, not conception, and Buddhists view life not as beginning with conception but as a cycle of reincarnations. The South Korean scientist who led the 2004 cloning team said at the time: "Cloning is a different way of thinking about the recycling of life. It's a Buddhist way of thinking."

Beloved by Forgers

In the June issue of ARTnews, Milton Esterow discusses a survey on the most-forged artists. Theodore Rousseau, a former curator at the Metropolitan Museum, is quoted as saying that only bad forgeries are found, while " the good ones are still hanging on the walls." The "10 most faked artists" are:

Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978)
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875)
Salvador Dalí (1904-1989)
Honoré Daumier (1808-1879)
Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)
Kazimir Malevich (1878-1935)
Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920)
Frederic Remington (1861-1909)
Auguste Rodin (1840-1917)
Maurice Utrillo (1883-1955)

Tobacco's Miracle in China

Cigarettes are miraculous, says the Chinese government, which monopolizes the world's largest tobacco market, with 360 million smokers, according to an article in The Globe and Mail, the Canadian daily.

Cigarettes, according to China's tobacco authorities, are an excellent way to prevent ulcers.

They also reduce the risk of Parkinson's disease, relieve schizophrenia, boost your brain cells, speed up your thinking, improve your reactions and increase your working efficiency.

And all those warnings about lung cancer? Nonsense. ...

If you believe the official Web site of the tobacco monopoly, cigarettes are a kind of miracle drug: solving your health problems, helping your lifestyle, strengthening the equality of women and even eliminating loneliness and depression.

"Smoking removes your troubles and worries," says a 37-year-old female magazine editor, quoted approvingly on the Web site. "Holding a cigarette is like having a walking stick in your hand, giving you support.

"Quitting smoking would bring you misery, shortening your life." ...

The number of Chinese smokers is growing by three million a year, despite an estimated 1.3 million tobacco-related deaths annually.

- from NYT Week In Review