
Shouldn't we urgently be thinking of decreasing the amount of rubbish we produce rather than becoming ill in order to be able to continue consuming and producing as much rubbish?
source = The Ecologist, September 07 issue.
It seems like the first complete replacement for animal testing is here in the form of Episkin - a reconstructed human skin which has been approved for testing if cosmetics are likely to irritate the skin.
Although cosmetics and skincare giant L'Oréal has been developing reconstructed skin since the 1980s, the search for animal alternatives became urgent in recent months with the introduction of two pieces of legislation. In December 2006, the European Union introduced REACH, which calls for more than 10,000 chemicals used in cosmetics to be tested for skin irritancy by 2019. At the same time, the EU's cosmetics
Skin cells called keratinocytes left-over from breast surgery are used to grow grows the skin layers on collagen
Episkin improves on animal testing in other ways too. For example, it can be adapted to resemble older skin by exposing it to high concentrations of UV light. Adding melanocytes also results in skin that can tan, and by using donor cells from women of different ethnicities, the team has created a spectrum of skin colours which they are using to measure the efficiency of sunblock for different skin tones.
"This is a great advance - not just for animals but for people, who will finally have a safety test that is relevant to them," says Kathy Archibald of the anti-vivisection group Europeans for Medical Progress, London. She says animal skin often differs dramatically from human skin in terms of sensitivity.
Albert Einstein once said that humanity would only have approximately another four years to live once bees had disappeared. His reasoning was simple: "no more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man."
And >> it looks like there are signs we really are heading towards doomsday, if we are to look at the health of bee populations today.
They are disappearing at an alarming rate, particularly in the United States and Germany. While it's normal for hive populations to fall during colder winter months, the recent exodus is puzzling beekeepers and researchers around the world.
Honeybees and bumblebees are essential for pollination. If bees continue to disappear these plants will set less seed, potentially resulting in gradual but sweeping changes to the countryside.
Bees are also of great commercial importance, much greater than I ever thought, being vital to the agricultural industry. Many arable and horticultural crops depend on bees for pollination to varying degrees.
There is already evidence that in some regions where fields are large and there are few hedgerows crop yields are depressed due to a shortage of bumblebees.
How could something so wondrous as pest-resistant corn kill millions upon millions of bees?
Simple – by producing so much natural pesticide that bees are either driven mad or away.
The planting of transgenic corn and soybean has increased exponentially, according to statistics from farm states. Tens of millions of acres of transgenic crops are allowing the genes that are adversely affecting bees to move off crop fields.
It seems like the final proof of the evils of GM might come in one big blow, finishing off the most important species that we depend upon for pollination of our food plants!Tata Chemicals, part of the giant Tata industrial group in India, plans to construct a soda-ash plant on Lake Natron in northern Tanzania, the most important breeding spot for the endangered lesser flamingo. Each summer 500,000 of the birds, three-quarters of the world's breeding population, fly to the lake to nest.
Chris Magin, the RSPB's officer for Africa, said that the development could leave the lesser flamingo - classified as a "near-threatened species" on the World Conservation Union red list - facing extinction.Temperatures plunged to -22C (-8F) in parts of Argentina's province of Rio Negro, while snow fell on Buenos Aires for several hours on Monday.
This is the first sight of snow in the capital since 1918.
Global warming and global freezing...