03Nov 2024 by Post

We Can’t Let “Experts” Decide the Morality of Making “Humanized Animals”

animals, bioethicists, brains, Culture & Ethics, doctors, experts, human life, humanized animals, humans, International Society for Stem Cell Research, Journal of Medical Ethics, lawyers, Medicine, mental capacities, neural function, organoids, personalized animals, personhood theory, philosophers, pig, rats, Research, Sergiu Paşca, speciesism, unborn humans
Bioethics is a utilitarianish social-political movement whose primary advocates are usually philosophers, lawyers, and/or doctors. Source
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10Feb 2023 by Post

Fossil Friday: The Abrupt Origins of Lagomorphs and Rodents

beavers, Carl von Linné, China, comparative morphology, Cretaceous, Dan Graur, Darwinism, Early Paleocene, East Asia, Euarchontoglires, Evolution, Fossil Friday, fossil record, Glires, guinea pigs, gundis, hamsters, hares, incongruence, Lagomorpha, Lagomorphs, mammals, mice, molecular clock studies, Mongolia, Nebraska, Oligocene, Palaeolagus haydeni, Paleocene, PaleoDB, paleontology, pikas, placental mammals, porcupines, rabbits, rats, Rodentia, rodents, squirrels, Systema Naturae, Tübingen
Molecular biologist Dan Graur mentioned his weird idea that guinea pigs are not rodents at a lecture at my university in Tübingen when I was still a student. Source
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02Jul 2022 by Post

Günter Bechly: Species Pairs Wreck Darwinism

African elephants, Asian elephants, biology, bison, Casey Luskin, cattle, chimps, Darwinian theory, donkeys, Evolution, Günter Bechly, Hawaiian Silverswords, horses, human exceptionalism, humans, ID The Future, Intelligent Design, mice, phenotypic plasticity, pygmy hippo, rats, river hippo, river hippos, species pairs, spectacled bear
Bechly and host Casey Luskin discuss cattle and bison, horses and donkeys, the Asian black bear and the South American spectacled bear, and more. Source
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16Sep 2021 by Post

Rats! Another Code Found in Whiskers

blood pressure, cats, cochlear hair cells, Darwinism, Dogs, Evolution, evolutionary theory, information, Intelligent Design, lobsters, Mitra Hartmann, neuron firings, Nicholas Bush, Northwestern University, PNAS, rabbits, rats, rodents, Sara Solla, sea lions, touch-screen phone, Vg neurons, whiskers, whisking
Neurons in a rat’s whiskers “represent multiple stimulus features in a tiled and continuous manner, thus encoding large regions of a complex sensory space.” Source
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14Sep 2021 by Post

Sunday with the Devil’s Acolyte — Thomas Henry Huxley

A Journal of the Plague Year, Charles F. Mullett, common descent, Copernican principle, Daniel Defoe, Evolution, Faith & Science, fleas, Human Zoos, Jacques Barzun, John West, London, Natural Law and the Structure of Matter, pandemic, plague, Plato, Racism, rats, Ruth Barton, scientism, St. Martin's Hall, Stephen Porter, The X Men, Thomas Henry Huxley, Werner Heisenberg, X Club, Yersinia pestis
Although the designation of Huxley as Darwin’s “bulldog” is well known, acolyte is a more appropriate term and here’s why. Source
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23Sep 2020 by Post

Sleep on It: Design in the Subconscious Brain

birds, circadian clock, Darwinism, Ernst Haeckel, evolutionists, firefighters, fruit flies, functional information, humans, infants, insects, Intelligent Design, mammals, natural selection, neural signaling, neurons, Neuroscience & Mind, NREM, phylogeny, rapid eye movement, rats, reptiles, roundworms, Science Advances, sleep, zebra finches
An international team reasoned there had to be a purpose for sleep. In one of the largest datasets ever collected, they believe they found two functions. Source
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16Sep 2020 by Post

Design on Time — Paley’s Watch Was Inside Him

biological clock, blood pressure, chronotype variation, circadian clock, clocks, Cyanobacteria, Harvard Medical School, imaging tools, Intelligent Design, Japan, jet lag, KaiC, mammalian locomotor activity, Nagoya University, Nature (journal), Nature Scientific Reports, neurons, PLOS ONE, PNAS, rats, sleep, suprachiasmatic nucleus, Synechococcus elongatus, University of Illinois, University of Rochester, William Paley
Watches are everywhere on the heath. Look up, look down, look inside; biology runs on time. Source
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07Mar 2020 by Post

Rats Are People, Too!

ambassador, Animal Welfare Act, animals, anthropocentrism, bioethicists, Culture & Ethics, human exceptionalism, humans, Jane Goodall, Kristen Andrews, lab rats, medical experiments, Medicine, mice, misanthropy, monkeys, Nuremberg Code, philosophy, rats, reduction, refinement, replacement, Susana Monsó
If animal-rights activists ever had their way, all uses of animals by humans would cease — no matter how beneficial to our welfare and thriving. That emphatically includes animal research in medical and scientific experiments.  Animal rights activists falsely claim that no value to humans comes from such experiments — a claim I have rebutted often. Not only does animal research save human lives and offer invaluable information about biology, but it has also been deemed a crucial human-rights protection. The Nuremberg Code specifically stated that animal studies must be conducted before human subject research. International laws and protocols have encoded this wisdom. Rats Are “Empathetic”? But animal rights activists keep fighting. The latest effort — by Kristen Andrews, a professor of philosophy, and Susana Monsó, a bioethicist — argues that…
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