Word: defection
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Castro is clearly trying to divert attention from his own domestic situation, which has deteriorated rapidly since the flow of economic support from Moscow was sharply cut in the early 1990s. But he also has a point. The U.S. makes it easy to defect from Cuba by allowing entry to all those who successfully flee. At the same time, the number of visas granted to enter the U.S. legally is limited...
...Norwegian survey of 370,000 mothers provides the strongest evidence yet that environmental hazards may trigger birth defects. Women who had given birth to one child with a defect had half the risk of having a second child with the same problem if they moved to another town...
Nobody fully understands how Ritalin and other stimulants work, nor do doctors have a very precise picture of the physiology of ADHD. Researchers generally suspect a defect in the frontal lobes of the brain, which regulate behavior. This region is rich in the neurotransmitters dopamine and norepinephrine, which are influenced by drugs like Ritalin. But the lack of a more specific explanation has led some psychologists to question whether ADHD is truly a disorder at all or merely a set of characteristics that tend to cluster together. Just because something responds to a drug doesn't mean...
Gage's tale is dramatic, but given the physical presence of a moral faculty in the brain, it need not take an iron projectile to reshape one's ethics. How about a virus? A birth injury? A genetic defect? It is quite possible that some of history's greatest villains harbored an unseen wound much like Gage's in the prefrontal cortex. Such may be the condition of all psychopaths. This is not to say that experience has no relevance to character. Abuse during childhood, experience of all sorts is inscribed on the brain. But childhood traumas have never fully...
...thanks to Phineas Gage, scientists will know where to search for that hole. It is surely where they will look when studying the brain -- donated to science -- of serial killer John Wayne Gacy, executed last May in Illinois. Suppose a Gage-like defect is found? Will it seem fair to have executed the man if he was physically incapable of moral judgment? As science begins to unravel bits of personality, accountability unravels with it. The person becomes his parts -- some working, some defective through no fault of his own. Will it become incumbent upon society to submit all killers...