BIO BLOG

4/4/13

Crime Stories  

Crime Stories

            Is it morally right to put innocent people into jail? Is it okay for people to deceive us in such a harsh way that we actually start to believe what we know really isn’t true? Is it okay that the people we trust most lie to us? In this case, the people lying would be the police. Is this right?

            In this story, 14-year-old Michael was accused of murdering his own sister. Michael’s sister was in her room when someone came in through her window and murdered her. The police automatically suspected that it had been an inside job so they brought 14-year-old Michael in for questioning. The police officer asked Michael who murdered his sister. When Michael answered no, the officer told Michael that he was going to hook him up to a device that can read when a person is nervous (basically a lie detector). Naturally Michael was nervous and scared but he answered every question honestly. When the officer came back with the results, he told Michael that there was a lie detected in his answer of “no” to the following question: “do you know who killed your sister?” When Michael tearfully promised that he did not know who killed his sister, the police started lying to him. The police told him all kinds of false evidence such as the fact that her blood was found in Michael’s room. The police quilted Michael into thinking that he might have actually killed his sister. In the end, the real murderer was found. The murderer was a homeless man who had been wondering around the neighborhood for some time.

            My personal response to this horrific story was disgust and disbelief. I couldn’t believe that someone who Michael was supposed to trust and feel safe around would lie to his face and actually guilt trip him into honestly thinking that he might have killed his own sister. I don’t understand why they immediately tried to pin the murder on someone who had no positive evidence for murdering someone. Why couldn’t they look at the bigger picture? So I ask you, if stories like these continue to happen how are we supposed to trust authority? Or better yet, how are we supposed to trust the people who are supposed to be protecting us?

             

How can technology transform the human body?

How can technology transform the human body?

Is it even possible for technology to transform our bodies? Do we want technology to transform our bodies? Some of these questions are answered in the Ted talk called, How can technology transform the human boy? 

In this video, the woman talks about what it would be like to mechanically enhance our bodies to do amazing things. She talks about how she studied with scientists to use biology and fashion into enhancing our bodies. She actually came up with a pill you can take which will make you smell good, like perfume. After taking the pill, when you sweat your sweat smells like perfume instead of the normal sweaty gross smell. I think this is pretty amazing but also very scary at the same time.

I do believe that it would be extremely cool to have your body be able to be capable of such cool things like this but I also think it is a big danger if it evolved into things even more crazy. Our society these days are so focused on "the next big thing" and whats "in style". I feel like if things like using amazing technology to enhance your body became popular, people would not be human anymore. We would be like robots. We would lose the things that are unique about every individual and we would not be ourselves anymore. We would not have the features that make us who we are as individuals. We would all be the same. So I ask you, would you choose to live as a robot or to be yourself, unique?

Forks Over Knives
Is the food structure of our "smartest era" helping us or killing us?
 Almost 2 out of 3 people are overweight in our society these days! Cases of diabetes are becoming more and more popular and the people with the most occurring cases of diabetes are teens and younger children! The very people who are supposed to be in the healthiest time period of their lives!
Forks Over Knives follows the research of Dr. T. Colin Campbell and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyn. Dr. Campbell and Dr. Esselstyn examine ways to control and or reverse things like diabetes by following a diet which completley cuts out meat and dairy substances. One interesting fact that these doctors found was that children who consume large amounts of meat are more likely to get cancer in the liver. Throughout the movie, the idea of the diet to get rid of diseases like diabetes is tested on patients. According to this movie, the diet seems to work and it reverses the effect of diabetes. Using this diet diminishes the effects of diabetes on the patients and it also almost diminishes uses for medication and pills for diabetes patients.
My personal view on this theory is, it might work for some people as it seemed to in the film but I also think that we as human beings need to watch the amount of intake of food. We also need to stop eating huge amounts of junk foods like chips, sweets, french fries and various other things. We need to have self control and change the way we eat, we need to eat a variety of good and different foods to balance our body out instead of completley eliminating one certain type of food like dairy or meat. Doing this and this alone, will make us 100 times healthier.

LUCY BLOG!
Is it fair to an animal to raise it as a human being and then let it go and leave it alone in the wild? Will the animal know what to do to be able to survive? Will the animal ever be able to live like a normal animal does? These questions and thoughts are answered in the talk about Lucy the Chimp. Lucy was a Chimpanzee that was raised as if she were a human baby. She had a mother and a father ( a couple that was willing to try this experiment) and she even had her own crib. The purpose of this experiment with Lucy was to see whether it was possible to raise a Chimp to be almost human. To see if Chimps could act like humans and get along with humans. At first, Lucy almost fit in. When Lucy was little, she would play with toys, and she would interact with people. Lucy learned sign language, she learned how to cook and she learned how to play with humans like another human being. Sometimes, Lucy would make tea for her "mother" and other times, she would play tag with her "father". Lucy's parent's thought of her as their own daughter.
When Lucy came into her teen years, she actually started becoming interested in boys. Human boys instead of Chimp boys. This might have been except able because Lucy had never seen another Chimp before. As Lucy started getting older, she became stronger and stronger. She got so strong that it was a concern and her parents decided to end the experiment and set her free to live like a normal Chimp. Lucy was brought to a little "island"(a little island surrounded by a river) in Africa. She was set free with some other Chimps that were brought up like her. A woman who was a friend of Lucy's stayed with them for a year and the chimps refused to go fend for themselves and eventually they wondered off and left the woman alone. All except for Lucy who stayed with her the whole time until the woman left. A year after leaving, the woman went back to see how Lucy and the others were doing. When she arrived, Lucy came to her and they hugged for a long time. The next time the woman came to check on Lucy, she found Lucy's remains. She was killed and skinned and her hands and feet were cut off. It is thought that hunters came onto the island and Lucy, being used to humans, approached them and was killed.

Was Lucy's death fair? I believe that Lucy's death was horrible and tragic. She died from a humans hand. Lucy was used to humans, she considered them family because she was raised that way. I do not believe that it is fair to Chimps to be raised as humans and then be let free and expected to fend for themselves. It is not fair and it is not just.