Reversal of early VCJD symptoms may one day be possible
Snip: vCJD in humans, BSE in cattle (mad cow disease) and scrapie in sheep are all forms of a brain degenerative disease where abnormal versions of proteins called "prions" clog up the brain synapses and stop messages passing between cells. The abnormal prions get into the brain and reproduce by making the natural prions change shape into the unnatural form. Eventually the brain develops a spongy-like form.
Humans get vCJD from eating BSE infected meat products and also from receiving the blood of someone who is infected.
Smelling your food may kill you
Snip: To explore things further, they worked with flies that carried a mutation that prevents the proteins that perceive odorants from making their way to the surface of their nerve cells, leaving the flies unable to smell. Female flies that ate a normal diet but lacked this gene saw their lifespans shoot up by over 50 percent (males were affected, but not as dramatically). Even losing one of the two copies was enough to raise lifespan by about 25 percent. The results indicate that, to an extent, smelling your food is lethal. It doesn't account for the full longevity effect, however, as cutting back on calories in the mutants pushed survival out to even longer periods.
Banning the letter "X" and other Saudi tales
Snip: I've said before that we're not fighting a war between the West and Islam but between the 21st and the 12th centuries. Here's more proof: Saudi Arabia's top religious leaders–who have declared jihads, ordered women cloaked head to toe, and fostered extremism worldwide–may now ban the letter "X" because it resembles the Christian cross. This peculiar news comes from a New York Sun story by the estimable Youssef Ibrahim, the Egyptian-born former New York Times reporter. The Saudis' latest fatwa on "X" comes from their highest religious authority, the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice– a body so sage that in 1974 it declared the Earth flat.
U.K. Mosques Exposed: If you need more evidence about the role of our pals in Riyadh, check out Undercover Mosque, a new documentary by Britain's Channel 4 program Dispatches. The producers put an undercover reporter into mosques run by some of the U.K.'s most prominent Islamic groups, which publicly present a face of being moderate and mainstream. The result: a chilling hour's worth of calls to jihad, hatred of infidels and democracy, and medieval attitudes toward women and gays. Behind the spread of extremism in British mosques, the program finds, is Saudi Arabia, through its funding of imams, schools, books, and DVDs. Could the same thing be happening in America? It already has. See the Center for Religious Freedom's 2005 study of U.S. mosques and their follow-up report on Saudi textbooks.
Chop Chop Square: Finally, here's a bit on the Saudis' charming custom of chopping off heads and other appendages. Back in November, Lebanon's LBC TV scored an interview with the man it called "the most renowned executioner in Saudi Arabia," Abdallah bin Sa'id al-Bishi (the gentleman pictured above). Under sharia, or Islamic law, Saudi Arabia still severs the heads, arms, and hands of those deemed guilty of various crimes–usually in a public square. The sentence comes the old-fashioned way, by sword. As the LBC correspondent said of al-Bishi, "There is no negotiating with him once the heads have ripened." Here's an excerpt, courtesy of the folks at MEMRI:
First TV host: When you behead more than three or four people at once, does it affect you? My second question is: Do you need a break between executions? Does it affect you or not?
Abdallah al-Bishi: Allah be praised, there is nothing to it. Three, four, five, or six–there is nothing to it. It's entirely normal. An execution is an execution, and as long as the person stands straight ... as long as the person stands straight, it makes our job much easier.
That vCJD study looks interesting.
I sure am glad I was born an infidel in the good ole USA. Thanks for posting MamaD.