Tag: biotechnology

Ukraine’s baby factories rake in record profits amid chaos of war

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

While average Ukrainians suffer amid NATO’s proxy war against Russia, business is booming for the surrogate baby industry, which requires a steady supply of healthy and financially desperate women willing to lease their wombs to affluent foreigners.

Ukraine’s baby factories rake in record profits amid chaos of war

Related:

Archived: How Ukraine’s Surrogate Mothers Have Survived the War

Archived: In War, Who Is a Surrogate Responsible to First?

The Scandal-Plagued Company behind Stranded Surrogacy Babies is Also Promoting a Controversial IVF Technique

Human trafficking and forgery of documents: the police accused the largest surrogate motherhood clinic in Ukraine

French Radical Protests: Can the Sinister Fascist Traits of Capitalism be Overcome?

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

President Macron is not a king but a pawn of global finance

The current tenant of the Elysee Palace has been called by NUPES, the left coalition opposition in France, a President-King. To do so is to give him a bigger role and more power than what he has. In reality, Macron is just one of the numerous figure heads of the billionaire class that meets in Davos once a year. The power resides there, concentrated, often anonymous and always brutal in a masquerade of do-gooders. In Davos, the financial Masters of the Universe, posturing as philanthropists, have been in reality jealously protecting the complex Gordian Knot that is global capitalism. Perhaps France’s radical protesters, in their quasi insurrection form, are trying to emulate Alexander the Great by putting this giant Gordian Knot to the sword!

French Radical Protests: Can the Sinister Fascist Traits of Capitalism be Overcome?

Stepping up US war preparations against China, Victoria Nuland visits South Asia

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)2 Comments

US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland visited Nepal, India and Sri Lanka between January 28 and February 1, before travelling to Qatar. Her trip coincided with US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin’s recent trip to South Korea for high-level meetings with President Yoon Suk-yeol and Defense Minister Lee Jong-seop.

Stepping up US war preparations against China, Victoria Nuland visits South Asia

Biden’s Tech-War “Goes Nuclear”

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Biden’s Tech-War “Goes Nuclear”

So, where is all of this heading, you ask?

To more conflict, more confrontation, higher prices, lower standards of living and, eventually, a disintegration of the prevailing order. That much is certain. The problem, of course, is that the China hawks now control the levers of power in Washington which means that the attacks on China will intensify, decoupling will accelerate, and a massively-destabilizing international crisis will soon follow.

Related:

Explained: How Americans In Chinese Tech Firms Might Have To Choose Between US Citizenship And Job

New COVID Booster Approved From Final Study of Mice, Not Humans, But Using Only Animal Data Is a Needless Gamble

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

VERIFY: New COVID booster approved from final study of mice, not humans

According to documents on the CDC website, human tests of Moderna’s version of the new booster are still “ongoing.” Right now, there is only final evidence from “8-10 mice” per group.”

The FDA’s website shows for Pfizer the agency also relayed on the final study evidence from “8 mice.” But human trials are also ongoing. So far, the new boosters “showed a similar local reaction and systemic event profile.” That means side effects appear to be about the same including “mild to moderate injection site pain, fatigue, and muscle pain.”

…

“To advance the Omicron BA.4/BA.5 bivalent vaccine as rapidly as possible, regulators, including the FDA, WHO and EMA, have advised that our submissions be based on safety and immunogenicity data generated in adults with an Omicron BA.1 bivalent vaccine and supported by BA.4/BA.5 bivalent pre-clinical data and BA.4/BA.5 bivalent quality and manufacturing data. These packages follow a similar model to that provided to public health officials who evaluate seasonal flu vaccines each year. Moving forward, this approach may help address the pressing need for vaccines that provide a high level of protection against current and emerging variants of concern so that we can remain vigilant against this evolving virus. The FDA has authorized our Omicron BA.4/BA.5 bivalent vaccine based on clinical data generated in adults with an Omicron BA.1 bivalent vaccine, pre-clinical data with a BA.4/BA.5 bivalent vaccine and BA.4/BA.5 bivalent quality and manufacturing data. Pre-clinical data showed a booster dose of Pfizer and BioNTech’s Omicron BA.4/BA.5- bivalent vaccine generated a strong neutralizing antibody response against Omicron BA.1, BA.2 and BA.4/BA.5 variants, as well as the original wild-type strain. A clinical study investigating the safety, tolerability and immunogenicity of the Omicron BA.4/BA.5 bivalent vaccine in individuals 12 years of age and older is ongoing. Data will be shared with regulators when available. We are facing a virus with an exceptionally high mutation rate, which the nimble mRNA platform is well situated to address. Only the mRNA sequence requires updating to match emerging strains, and utilizing a bivalent vaccine aims to provide broader coverage against known and future COVID-19 variants of concern.”

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The U.S. Lost the 5G Race…after an Immigrant was Forced to Leave

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)2 Comments

The U.S. Lost the 5G Race…after an Immigrant was Forced to Leave via Newsthink

Related:

The U.S. Needs a Million Talents Program to Retain Technology Leadership (archived)

It’s not just a matter of enticing new immigrants but of retaining bright minds already in the country. In 2009, a Turkish graduate of the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Erdal Arikan, published a paper that solved a fundamental problem in information theory, allowing for much faster and more accurate data transfers. Unable to get an academic appointment or funding to work on this seemingly esoteric problem in the United States, he returned to his home country. As a foreign citizen, he would have had to find a U.S. employer interested in his project to be able to stay.

Back in Turkey, Arikan turned to China. It turned out that Arikan’s insight was the breakthrough needed to leap from 4G telecommunications networks to much faster 5G mobile internet services. Four years later, China’s national telecommunications champion, Huawei, was using Arikan’s discovery to invent some of the first 5G technologies. Today, Huawei holds over two-thirds of the patents related to Arikan’s solution—10 times more than its nearest competitor. And while Huawei has produced one-third of the 5G infrastructure now operating around the world, the United States does not have a single major company competing in this race. Had the United States been able to retain Arikan—simply by allowing him to stay in the country instead of making his visa contingent on immediately finding a sponsor for his work—this history might well have been different.