“President Bush last week signed into law a bill which will see the federal government begin to screen the DNA of all newborn babies in the U.S. within six months, a move critics have described as the first step towards the establishment of a national DNA database.

Described as a “national contingency plan” the justification for the new law S. 1858, known as The Newborn Screening Saves Lives Act of 2007, is that it represents preparation for any sort of “public health emergency.”

The bill states that the federal government should “continue to carry out, coordinate, and expand research in newborn screening” and “maintain a central clearinghouse of current information on newborn screening… ensuring that the clearinghouse is available on the Internet and is updated at least quarterly”.

Sections of the bill also make it clear that DNA may be used in genetic experiments and tests.

Read the full bill here.

One health care expert and prominent critic of DNA screening is Twila Brase, president of the Citizens’ Council on Health Care who has written a detailed analysis (PDF) of the new law in which she warns that it represents the first program of populationwide genetic testing.

Brase states that S.1858 and H.R. 3825, the House version of the bill, will:

• Establish a national list of genetic conditions for which newborns and children are to be tested.

• Establish protocols for the linking and sharing of genetic test results nationwide.

• Build surveillance systems for tracking the health status and health outcomes of individuals diagnosed at birth with a genetic defect or trait.

• Use the newborn screening program as an opportunity for government agencies to identify, list, and study “secondary conditions” of individuals and their families.

• Subject citizens to genetic research without their knowledge or consent.

Soon, under this bill, the DNA of all citizens will be housed in government genomic biobanks and considered governmental property for government research,” Brase writes. “The DNA taken at birth from every citizen is essentially owned by the government, and every citizen becomes a potential subject of government-sponsored genetic research.“

“The public is clueless. S. 1858 imposes a federal agenda of DNA databanking and population-wide genetic research. It does not require consent and there are no requirements to fully inform parents about the warehousing of their child’s DNA for the purpose of genetic research.  DNA of newborns has already been harvested, tested, stored and experimented with nationwide.”

Thanks to Alex Jones Infowars for the article.

I am an expecting father, and this concerns me very much.  The $100 Genome is right around the corner, and sooner than we think this practice will be common worldwide.  I have always been an advocate of science and exploration.  The human psyche and intellect are marvels, and when in sync with nature can wield God-Like powers.  My highest prayer is that my child will be born into a world of wonder and marvel, and the world is already there and growing.  But we must bevigilant that this “Great Flower” of our intellect and culture not get snipped in the bud.  The sequencing of the human genome offers miraculous possibilities: personalized medicine, growing body parts, cloning, and many more.  All enormously important skills, and only in infant stages compared to what we will develop.  But the federal government wanting to own and store all of the worlds DNA brings up crucial questions with dire and monumental implications. 

• Why are they doing this?
• What are they looking for? 
• Is there no way for a concerned parent to opt out. 
• Is there no way for us to know what experiments are being done with our childrens DNA. (fill in your wildest and craziest sci-fi conspiracy theory here)

In Aldous Huxleys A Brave New World, humans were grown in test-tubes, having just the right amount of nutrient provided or denied at just the right moment, leading to a race that was genetically bred to enjoy its class status.  Workers were dumbed down brutes who enjoyed the hard, mind numb labor, while feeling sorry for their superiors.  Leaders were intellectually keen and beautiful, bred for a life of control, and always feeling sorry for their inferiors.  Does that not already seem like how the world is?  If not in genetic practice, at least in culture and superficiality?
My child is the symbol of the promise of the future.  Its a promise that time marches on, and new actors enter the stage always.  Its a promise that someone will come after me, who will also need clean air and water.  Its a promise that someone will come after me who will also laugh and cry.  It is a promise that someone will come after me, who will also wander wondering.

Like a drunken giant, The federal government lumbers violently from mishap to bloody mishap, leaving both economy and ecology in grave danger.  And now we are supposed to trust the very essence of our descendants with them….. NO. Until the process is much more transparent, and each and every parent has the knowledge and ability to opt out, or remain in control of their childs DNA, NO. 
Expecting parents, people with newborns, and anyone who ever wants to have a child.  THIS CONCERNS YOU!  DNA is the very essence of your being and makeup.  Its your “sourcecode”.  This is the fruition of Eugenics.  This is the beginning of A Brave New World. 
Help Me change this.  My Question of the day is: How do we, in a New Non Violent Revolution, approach this problem dynamically and successfully from multiple angles?  Leave comments…

I am interested in having guest authors from time to time on The 507 Effect.  If anyone has something interesting to say regarding the Universe, Future, Present, or Past, please email me @ cardona507@hotmail.com or leave a comment.  Peace.

“Last week, in the harsh desert climate of Abu Dhabi, construction started on a city that will house 50,000 people and 1,500 businesses but use extremely little energy, and what it does use will come from renewable sources. The initial building is a new research institute that the founders hope will be the seed for the equivalent of a Silicon Valley of the Middle East, only one centered not on information technology but on renewable energy.

The city, which is expected to cost $22 billion, will implement an array of technologies, including thin-film solar panels that serve as the facades and roofing materials for buildings, ubiquitous sensors for monitoring energy use, and driverless vehicles powered by batteries that make cars unnecessary. Indeed, the city’s founders hope that it will serve as a test bed for a myriad of new technologies being proposed to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions.

The new zero-emissions city, which is being built near the city of Abu Dhabi in the center of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), is part of the Masdar Initiative, a $15 billion government-funded investment program designed in part to ensure that the UAE’s prosperity won’t be linked exclusively to its oil. Its leaders say that the project will give the country a leadership position in renewable energy. If it’s successful, says Sultan al Jaber, Masdar’s CEO, “we’ll be sitting on top of the world.”

Thanks to TechnologyReview.com for the article:Building the Zero-Emissions City

Why are we not doing this in America?  High Tech is changing the world quickly, and old school thinking is going to get america left behind.  Its time for Talented, Intelligent, Visionary people to take this country back, and help renew it and lead it into a Great Future.  The current leaders, both on stage and behind the curtain only seek to enslave us and our DNA.  Help me rise up and herald a new non violent revolution.  One based on Human rights, renewed sense of ethics and spirituality, and “Green” Science/Technology.

omegaprojectmusic.com

When energy is free to all humanity.  Then I will feel like I have served my unborn child.
When no one on earth is hungry.  Then I will feel like I have served my unborn child.
When war is a nightmare of yesterday.  Then I will feel like I have served my unborn child.
When the future looks better than the past.  Then I will feel like I have served my unborn child.
When core human rights are truly guaranteed to all, without regard to race.  Then I will feel like I have served my unborn child.
When my child is my age and takes the reigns.  Then I will feel like I have served my unborn child.

Natalie and I are having a baby!
The Due Date is NEW YEARS EVE!!
HAPPY NEW YEAR!

You can now subscribe to this blog and have it delivered to your email.  Click on Subscribe to The 507 Effect by Email and enter your email adress. 
Also, I wanted to thank everyone for visiting the blog.  Please leave more comments!  I love to know who is reading.
Check out the music of The Omega Project at omegaprojectmusic.com

“HABITS are a funny thing. We reach for them mindlessly, setting our brains on auto-pilot and relaxing into the unconscious comfort of familiar routine. “Not choice, but habit rules the unreflecting herd,” William Wordsworth said in the 19th century. In the ever-changing 21st century, even the word “habit” carries a negative connotation.

So it seems antithetical to talk about habits in the same context as creativity and innovation. But brain researchers have discovered that when we consciously develop new habits, we create parallel synaptic paths, and even entirely new brain cells, that can jump our trains of thought onto new, innovative tracks.”

Thanks to NYTimes.com for the story.

Below is this week’s summary of pending state legislation and tips to help you become involved in changing the laws in your state.

Thanks to Ron Fisher, NORML Outreach Coordinator for the info.

Albert Hoffman, the man who first synthesized LSD in 1938 has died at the age of 102.  He called LSD his “problem child”.  LSD has been one of our cultures Great Catalysts and it is a shame that its use is currently prohibited.  Albert Hoffman, thank you for broadening my horizons.

Humanity and Technology promise many marvels.  The power lying dormant at our fingertips is enough to power the world forever, or destroy it in a nuclear fission.  The technological promises of tomorrow are even more wondrous and amazing.  it seems that humanity, after billions of years of evolution, has reached a break point.  A point at which using the powers of its own mind, and the resources of its own planet, we will finally create tools allowing us to leave behind our primitive and violent past, and have abundance for all creation.  Already the tech exists for all humans to have electricity and clean water.  Already there are enough junk computers and cell phones for everyone on earth to be connected.  But the divide is in the profit motive.  I understand that people who develop new paradigms want to be compensated.  Even more so paradigms that are God-Like.  But never before has humanity truly had the opportunity to feed and cloth everyone.  Never before has humanity had the chance to make everyone healthy.  Never before have we had the chance to explore and colonize the galaxy.  This window may be closing rapidly.  An oil based society is doomed to collapse.  Currently we have an economic and cultural engine unheard of before in history.  We are on the launchpad, poised for a Grand Horizon.  But already the barbarians are looming on the borders.  Already the inmates run the asylum. 
Half the world — nearly three billion people — live on less than two dollars a day.*  The poorest 40 percent of the world’s population accounts for 5 percent of global income. The richest 20 percent accounts for three-quarters of world income.*  Nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their names.*  The stats are alarming because we are reaching a point of intelligence explosion.  As the gap between poor, uneducated people and enhanced intelligence grows wider, can we trust that there will not be some type of enslavement?  Can we trust that smaller more powerful technologies and weapons won’t be used in a host of ways against humanity and our culture?
If we navigate this narrow course, and prevent the train from derailing, humanity may be entering a phase where intelligence truly “flowers”, and we come into the great promise that we seem so capable of.  There appear to be no other signs of our form of intelligence in the observable Universe, meaning that either we are very very special, or that all societies that reach our level of development destroy themselves, and so we are also destined.  How we navigate this course will depend on each and every human.  No one can be left out or behind.  It the profit motive continues, then people will be left out, and there will be two classes.  Those enhanced and those not enhanced.  Enhanced humans already exist.  If you have a cell phone, use the internet, own a gun.  You are enhanced by technology.  It is all a matter of degree.  If the profit motive disappears, then there is enough for everyone.  All of earths resources will be directed at uplifting our minds, and harvesting the best ideas of the world so that we don’t miss this crucial window in time.  Everyone on earth will be provided for easily, and instead of the haves and the have nots, there will only be The Haves and The Have Mores.

*Thanks to GlobalIssues.org for the facts.

Each day I read something regarding a major break though in science or technology.  Each day something happens that would be monumental at any other moment in history, but we barely even notice it.  We are reaching a point of take off in terms of what Moores Law and computing can show us.  DNA Sequencing for the masses, Artificial Intelligence, A Theory of Everything, God like Machines, and many more wonders appear to be on humanities horizon.  Cochlear implants, Verichip, and BrainGate show very clearly that humans are all too willing to to meld with their machines.  But key questions are not being asked as a culture.  Transhumanism attempts to ask some of the questions. 

• Will new technologies only benefit the rich and powerful?
• Aren’t these future technologies very risky? Could they even cause our extinction?
• If these technologies are so dangerous, should they be banned?
• Is there any ethical standard …
• What kind of society would posthumans live in?
• Will posthumans or superintelligent machines pose a threat to humans who aren’t augmented?
• Will transhuman technologies make us inhuman?
• Are transhumanist technologies environmentally sound?
• How does transhumanism relate to religion?
• What kind of transhumanist art is there?
• Won’t these developments take thousands or millions of years?

And many more.  The world we live in is changing drastically.  It appears that this generation has been given the task to “program” the next epoch of Space/Time.  Wielding God like power, we will create an exponential reflection of our intentions and resources.  But my question is, Who or What are we Creating?