Genetically-Engineered Microorganisms

I’ve read about how bacteria and micro-organisms have been genetically altered to fight disease. For example insulin is produced by bacteria that is altered to generate insulin. Viruses have been also genetically altered to inject dna code to liver cells in hopes of getting liver cell to turn into insulin producing betacells. Research like about seems farfetched yet almost all insulin produced
today is from modified bacteria.

What research has been done to this effect – not just in attempts to cure diabetes? Could viruses modified to attack cancer cell for example? A few years back there was cases with “flesh eating” bacteria (and got a lot of hysteric press coverage). Could similar organism be “programmed” to “eat” cancer cells etc.? I’ve also read about using phages to this effect. What happened to that?

Should a virus be made to attack cancer cells they would then be destroyed by normal immunesystem.

How about using something like above for diagnostic tools. A bacteria would emit something detectable if it gets into contact with cancer cells. The “something” would then be detected with current diagnostic tools.

Game Addictus

The scary thing about game addiction is this stuff is real. I was once watching a clip on CNN where they talked about PC game cafés in South Korea, and they mentioned one kid who dropped out of school just to play games there all day.

That wasn’t an isolated case apparently. A very old article from 2001 mentions an “EverQuest widow” whose husband apparently insisted on playing EverQuest while she gave birth.

That’s a sign that something’s horribly wrong.

The thing with addiction is that it’s not simply a physical thing as many people believe.

But the problem doesn’t simply lie with the games themselves as a result, blaming games for addiction is a bit like blaming the murder on the gun! Are we resonsible for ourselves? I should certainly hope so and anyone who makes their own choice to quit something is already further ahead on the road to
recovery than someone who has the option forced upon them.

I play a little more often than my girlfriend might like but I use it to relax and don’t take them very seriously at all (even if I do curse at them!), we all do things habitually that could be considered addictive, TV is certainly very insiduous, at least while playing online I’m interacting
and I try to treat people online as I would in real life, with courtesy and respect.

The fact that people so esily ignore that contributes to the view that it is socially abnormal, I guess if you never develop the skills in real life it can only get worse online.

In many things moderation is key I guess, one of the biggest problems in society (just about every single one) is the desire to control what others do, be it religion, politics, media, consumerism and thought. Prohibition as Lao Tzu pointed out over 2 thousand years ago, does not work. Rather than allowing right-wing/left-wing socialist nutters to grab the reins and make decisions on just about everything that affects us (you have heard about the mind altering drugs used to control childrens “behavourial problems” right?) why not pay more attention to how we bring our children up? Or pay more attention to how society treats them? I have to say that America suffers from a popularity culture that excludes, even sub-cultures do this, trying to enforce smallmindedness on something rather than
understanding, koreans have gone a bit potty for games and the net it would seem and In the UK we bury our heads in the sands over BSE, GM crops, Europe and wars we don’t want!

I guess the problems extend way beyond simple gaming addiction, the way we live life is in fact a wee bit of an issue.