Word: thought
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Meanwhile, genetically engineered drugs will increasingly replace the scalpel for removal of tumors or cosmetic surgery like hair transplants. Indeed, after much hype and few results, gene therapy is finally making major strides--although not the way doctors thought it would. Once they hoped to cure diseases by repairing defective genes. Now it seems a lot easier to determine what proteins the broken genes should be making and replace them instead. Dr. Jeffrey Isner at St. Elizabeth's Medical Center in Boston has achieved remarkable results with a protein called vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF2) in restoring circulation...
...lose interest in sex outside a restricted mating period. For a female chimpanzee, copulation is confined to the times when she has a pink swelling on her rump. Outside those lusty periods, she would never think of trying to seduce a male, and he'd be horrified at the thought. But humans have taken a much more persistent view of sexual possibilities, probably since they first evolved as a species...
Neither of these explanations need trouble us. We are not going to use cloning to make the whole of the next generation from one individual (though in the 1930s several eminent geneticists thought that when IVF became available, lots of people would rush out to choose prominent men such as Lenin as a father--which just goes to show how wrong geneticists can be about the future). Also, genetic mutations accumulate much too slowly to worry...
...many decades ago, those advocating the preservation of wilderness constituted a small minority and were considered to be on the radical fringe. Such pastimes as mountaineering and backpacking were thought to be the exclusive domain of outcasts, anarchists and social misfits. But there has been a broad-based shift in public opinion of late. Polls show that a majority of Americans now place a high priority on protecting the environment...
...second thought...