Virgin Birth
It has been known before that bony fish, bees and ants can reproduce without having sexual contact with the males. Now scientists also confirm that female sharks and lizards can also do the same. Richard Gibson, Curator at the Zoological Society of London said that Parthenogenesis has been described before in about 70 species of vertebrates, but it has always been regarded to be very unusual or abnormal phenomenon. The Greek calls this type of reproduction “Parthenogenesis”, a pregnancy that occurs when an egg cell is triggered to develop as an embryo without the addition of any genetic material from a male sperm cell. Scientist at the Henry Doorly Zoo in Nebraska had produced evidence from studying a captive shark delivery a pub in 2001 despite having had no contact with a male. And in 2006, the Chester Zoo and the London Zoo in the United Kingdom also reported that two female Komodor dragons having produced offspring without any male contact. The genetic make-up of the offspring of this kind of virgin birth only comes from the mother. Now that we know that virgin birth is much more widespread and common phenomenon of life on earth than we previously thought. We should then go back and look again at the bible story about the virgin birth. Maybe it is not as unusual at all that “asexual reproduction” can happen to human female as well.
Filed under Science | Comment (0)Political Wives In Thailand’s Cabinet
I don’t even know whether to laugh or cry when I read the names of the women who have been appointed last week in Thailand’s new government. There are four women and thirty men in the cabinet. All of them are wives of politicians of the defunct Thai Rak Thai Party. Poonpirom Liptapanlop, Energy Minister is the wife of Suwat Liptapanlop, the banned politician from the Thai Rak Thai party, Anongwan Thepsuthin, Natural Resources and Environment Minister, the wife of Somsak Thepsuthin, former member of the banned Thai Rak Thai party. Ranongrak Suwanchawee, wife of Pairoj Suwanchawee, another banned member of the Thai Rak Thai party, a nurse by profession but got appointed to Deputy Finance Minister Post. Uraiwan Thienthong, Labour Minister, the wife of Sanoh Thienthong, former member of the defunct Thai Rak Thai Party. I support women in politics, but not in this way. The route for women to power and leadership positions in the government should be by their own capability and qualification, not because they happened to be married to well-connected politicians. It is an insult to a large number of Thai women who have fought for years for women’s equal participation in the country’s political development. It is ashamed, that a result of the last election, things had turned out this way.
Filed under Thailand | Comment (0)Genetically-modified Babies
We are getting closer to producing babies that can avoid some diseases carried in the genes of their parent. In the next two years, Patrick Chinnery, the British Professor of Neurogenetics at the Newcastle University said, couples will benefit from the results of the research conducted on embryos created with DNA from 3 people, two women and one man. The research group had successfully created 10 such embryos using normal embryos from one man and one woman that had defective mitochondria in the woman’s egg, and implanted that embryo into an emptied egg donated from a second woman who had healthy mitochondria. It was found that mistakes in the mitochondria’s genetic code could result in serious diseases such as muscular dystrophy, epilepsy, strokes and mental retardation. The House of Commons will discuss the issue to allow the procedure to be regulated as a therapy for couples in March this year. I think this is very good news for the future parents who wants to swap bad genes for good ones so that they don’t have to pass gene carrying diseases such as muscular dystrophy, epilepsy, strokes and mental retardation to the next generation.
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