Health Notes
Vaccines being developed to combat bird flu may be ineffective because by the time the vaccine is produced the virus may have mutated into a different form. Additionally, there have been proposals in China and the UK to replace all the world's chickens with genetically modified ones that would be immune to the bird flu, but doesn't the same problem exist with this plan? If you modify the chickens and the virus mutates, then it seems to me like all you have is a bunch of genetically modified chickens that may or may not be effective in preventing a pandemic. And once you change the world's chickens, you can't go back. They're gone forever. But of course the corporation that patented it would be doing well. The world eats a lot of chicken.

Britain plans to ban importing all captive birds (except chickens.) Well, that sounds like a real solution to beating a bird flu pandemic.

Here's another example of scientists sticking their, uh, nose where they shouldn't. Doctors developed a technique through which they can use a device to help infertile couples get pregnant by injecting a human sperm directly into a human egg. Only problem, they find out now that babies born using this technique may be more prone to having more birth defects. Did you ever think that maybe there's a reason those sperm were not impregnating those eggs? Did you ever think that maybe nature wants the strongest sperm to pass on their traits, not the weakest? I don't know if any of this is the reason for the birth defects, but it's worth looking into. (Note: here is an interesting article. It says that this technique is used mainly for male infertility, and when the man doesn't produce good quality sperm.)