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Technological Repression of Xinjiang Muslims 

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Technological Repression of Xinjiang Muslims 

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Human test subjects – Nazi Medical Experiments 

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Human test subjects – Nazi Medical Experiments 

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Satellite Technologies in Emergency Response 

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Satellite Technologies in Emergency Response 

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Chips monitoring Chinese Students (ABC, 2018)

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Chips monitoring Chinese Students (ABC, 2018)

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Summary:
Chinese schools have begun enforcing "smart uniforms" embedded with computer chips to monitor student movements and prevent them from skipping classes. Eleven schools in the south-west province of Guizhou have introduced the uniforms, which were developed by local tech firm Guizhou Guanyu Technology. As students enter the school, the time and date is recorded along with a short video that parents can access via a mobile app. Facial recognition further ensures that each uniform is worn by its rightful owner to prevent students from cheating the system.

Key points:

Skipping class or leaving the classroom without permission triggers an alarm

GPS system can track student movements even beyond the school grounds

Beijing has made regular calls on all schools to develop "smart campuses"

Pros:

Cons & Limitations:

Possible Controversial issues:

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Chinese schools have begun enforcing "smart uniforms" embedded with computer chips to monitor student movements and prevent them from skipping classes.

Skipping class or leaving the classroom without permission triggers an alarm

A GPS system tracks student movements even beyond the school grounds

Beijing has made regular calls on all schools to develop "smart campuses"

Eleven schools in the south-west province of Guizhou have introduced the uniforms, which were developed by local tech firm Guizhou Guanyu Technology.

As students enter the school, the time and date is recorded along with a short video that parents can access via a mobile app.

Facial recognition further ensures that each uniform is worn by its rightful owner to prevent students from cheating the system.

Skipping classes triggers an alarm to inform teachers and parents of the truancy, while an automatic voice alarm activates if a student walks out of school without permission.

A GPS system tracks student movements even beyond the school grounds.

The two chips - inserted into each uniform's shoulders - can withstand up to 500 washes and 150 degrees Celsius, the company told state media Global Times.

Alarms will also sound if a student falls asleep in class, while parents can monitor purchases their child makes at the school and set spending limits via a mobile app, according to the company's official website.

The company released a public statement via popular Chinese social media site Weibo saying the uniforms "focus on safety issues", and provide a "smart management method" that benefits students, teachers and parents.

Guanyu Technology's marketing manager also bragged of the uniforms' capabilities on a personal Weibo account.

"You go to any school and ask the security guard how many students there are in the school today. He definitely can't give you an answer, but we can," the post read.

On its website, the development company said the uniforms were designed to "fully implement the state policy of actively constructing smart campuses and smart education management for the development of education".

In recent years, Beijing has made regular calls on all schools to develop "smart campuses" in a push to digitalise education.

'Don't children have human rights and privacy?'

A GPS system tracks students' movements even beyond the school grounds.(Supplied: Guanyun Technology )

Despite all the benefits touted by the company, the uniforms have prompted backlash on social media.

"If you were a child, would you like to be monitored 24 hours a day?" asked one Weibo user with the nickname Sangguo_Sunny.

"Don't children have human rights and privacy?" user Dawson-HO said.

But blogger Yi Zhi Sirius defended the new uniforms, saying "the uniforms will come in handy when it comes to locating missing students".

Guanyu Technology's marketing manager also bragged of the uniforms' capabilities on a personal Weibo account.(Supplied: Guanyu Technology )

Speaking to the Global Times, Lin Zongwu, principal of Number 11 School of Renhuai in Guizhou, said although the school had the ability to track students at all times, they used this technology sparingly.

"We choose not to check the accurate location of students after school, but when the student is missing and skipping classes, the uniforms help locate them," Mr Lin said, adding the attendance rate had increased since the intelligent uniforms were introduced.

Guanyu Technology responded to criticism on Weibo, saying the company did "respect and protect human rights".

"The smart uniform does not track students' every single move all the time," the company wrote.

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Chinese schools enforce 'smart uniforms' with GPS tracking system to monitor students

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Chinese schools have begun enforcing "smart uniforms" embedded with computer chips to monitor student movements and prevent them from skipping classes. Skipping class or leaving the classroom without permission triggers an alarm A GPS system tracks student movements even beyond the school grounds Beijing has made regular calls on all schools to develop "smart campuses" Eleven schools in the south-west province of Guizhou have introduced the uniforms, which were developed by local tech firm Guizhou Guanyu Technology.

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Electronic monitoring bracelets (The Conversation, 2019)

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Electronic monitoring bracelets (The Conversation, 2019)

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Summary:
The rise of electronic monitoring- here it is used in the corrections systems and it refers to the tagging of a person as a form of surveillance, usually in the form of a GPS-enabled ankle bracelet. When an offender is subject to electronic monitoring, a computer database is updated with information about the rules he or she has been instructed to follow. Each jurisdiction and each agency may have their own database, so where the offender appears in the database will depend on who is supervising the electronic monitoring order. The database is then monitored by enforcement authorities, although this is sometimes outsourced to private providers or overseas companies. While the data is generally sent from the offender’s GPS device to the monitoring agency in real time, there can be delays in how long it takes for that information to be passed to police or corrective services.

Pros:

Cons & Limitations:

Possible Controversial Issues:

Consider other possible contexts where such electronic monitoring could be employed and the possible controversies/tensions such use could pose:

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The man arrested after a deadly gun attack in Darwin Tuesday night is reported to have been on parole and wearing an electronic monitoring bracelet.

This leads to the same reaction we see following any high-profile crime. How could such a thing happen?

People may speculate that the criminal justice agencies involved have somehow dropped the ball. The offender was on their radar, after all.

Read more: Online tools can help people in disasters, but do they represent everyone?

While this finger-pointing may serve a cathartic function, it is important we also question our expectations before assuming a failure occurred.

We need to understand what electronic monitoring intends to achieve, how it works, and what are its capabilities and limitations.

Electronic tagging

In the context of the corrections system, electronic monitoring refers to the tagging of a person as a form of surveillance, usually in the form of a GPS-enabled ankle bracelet.

In Australia, each state and territory uses electronic monitoring differently, guided by their own legislative frameworks.

Practices vary considerably between jurisdictions. For example, in some places, certain offenders are targeted (high-risk recidivists, those who repeatedly reoffend, for example). In others, specific types of offences are the focus (such as child sex offences).

The application of electronic monitoring even differs between offenders, as the supervising agency uses it for reasons specific to each person.

A police department might use electronic monitoring to ensure a domestic violence perpetrator does not visit the victim before a trial. A probation officer might require an offender to wear a bracelet for 12 months to ensure they are attending treatment and meeting their curfew. A parole officer could place the GPS tracking condition on an offender for the first three months following release from prison to better understand how the parolee spends his or her time.

Each of these experiences will be quite different, as each is intended to fulfil a unique aim.

Ordinarily, electronic monitoring is used as a tool of incapacitation and deterrence.

In the first instance, an offender may be told to follow a particular rule - for example, to be home by 8pm, to stay away from the victim, to attend a treatment program, or not to go within 1km of a school. Electronic monitoring allows authorities to monitor the person's compliance with such a condition.

In the latter instance, an offender may be deterred from certain behaviour if they believe their actions are likely to be detected through electronic monitoring.

Monitoring actions

When an offender is subject to electronic monitoring, a computer database is updated with information about the rules he or she has been instructed to follow. Each jurisdiction and each agency may have their own database, so where the offender appears in the database will depend on who is supervising the electronic monitoring order.

The database is then monitored by enforcement authorities, although this is sometimes outsourced to private providers or overseas companies. While the data is generally sent from the offender's GPS device to the monitoring agency in real time, there can be delays in how long it takes for that information to be passed to police or corrective services.

What occurs when an offender breaches one of the rules and a computer alert is generated depends on factors such as legislation and the priority of a case influencing the response. The database includes information about what to do in the event of specific kinds of breaches with specific offenders.

In some cases, an alarm on the device may go off or, very rarely, the police may be immediately notified.

Most often, for routine cases and ordinary breaches, the monitoring agency will notify the offender's supervisor (such as a parole officer or a local police department), who will then determine how to proceed.

There may be a lag of several days during this process. For example, if a low-risk offender misses their home curfew on Friday night (as determined by the GPS bracelet), the parole officer will not receive notification of this breach until Monday morning.

The pros and cons of tagging

There are a range of benefits and disadvantages to the electronic monitoring of offenders.

It can be effective in holding offenders accountable, protecting victims and enhancing community safety and preventing crimes. These come with important cost savings, particularly when offenders can be safety monitored in the community in lieu of imprisonment or as a mechanism of early release from prison.

But some of the downfalls are that offenders can tamper with their devices, and there can be GPS dead zones - particularly in a geographically vast country such as Australia. There may also be human error in using the systems, such as improper monitoring or unreasonable decision-making after an alert.

Yet collectively, the research evidence highlights that electronic monitoring can be an effective tool for discouraging recidivism. But it is only that: a tool.

The most effective practices for supervising offenders in the community include those that identify and reduce a person's risks for continued criminal behaviour.

Read more: AI can help in crime prevention, but we still need a human in charge

Electronic monitoring will be most effective when it is used to support supervision that limits a person's access to chances to commit crime. Such supervision should help them redesign their routines so that any risky settings are avoided and are replaced with more positive influences.

Thus, rather than simply giving offenders a long list of rules for what not to do, effective probation and parole strategies help offenders lead productive lives.

More broadly, it is imperative that correctional authorities provide rehabilitative interventions that address the underlying factors that contribute toward a person's criminal behaviour. The most effective approaches use cognitive-behavioural techniques to give offenders skills that encourage good decision-making.

Yet electronic monitoring cannot "fix" an offender's impulsivity, lack of empathy, or any other underlying crime-conducive traits. Thus we should not confuse a technological aid with meaningful treatment.

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Electronic monitoring bracelets are only crime deterrence tools, they can't 'fix' offenders

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The man arrested after a deadly gun attack in Darwin Tuesday night is reported to have been on parole and wearing an electronic monitoring bracelet. This leads to the same reaction we see following any high-profile crime. How could such a thing happen? People may speculate that the criminal justice agencies involved have somehow dropped the ball.

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Biometric Registration of Rohingya Refugees 

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Biometric Registration of Rohingya Refugees 

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Clinical Trials for Vaccine Development 

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Clinical Trials for Vaccine Development 

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https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uHbn7wLN_3k

TEDTALK📹

Summary:
3D printing is where things such as organs,tissues,cells,blood vessels etc are created using bioink that contains cells of organ donors

Ethical issues:
1. equal access to healthcare treatment
- improves universal access as it reduces time and cost of treatment(better alternative to prosthetics)
2. clinical safety complications
- risky as there may be health implications
3. enhancing human body
-can increase human performance,strength & speed
4. Reduces the use of animals for testing
5. Patient or organ donors’ privacy/dignity

Proposed solution:
- requires govt regulation so that companies do not misuse this technology to earn profits. govt should be in control of this technology and restrict the usage only in the medical field
Ensure benefits > risks

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jiaxuan pat
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/10/07/health/what-is-crispr-explainer-scn-trnd/index.html

1. - allows scientists to chnage our DNA by knocking out a particular gene or inseting new genetic material at a pre determined site in our DNA
- change the DNA code in a atrgeted way to help understand and treat genetic disease
- usage: agriculture (rice, livestock with desirbale traits), sickle cell disease
- He JianKui; jailed for 3 years aft announcing twin girls had been borned with modified DNA to make them resistant to HIV by using CRISPR
- called out for being unethical, monstrous

2. controversial
a) unethical; germline editing
=>Germline human genome editing, on the other hand, alters the genome of a human embryo at its earliest stages. This may affect every cell, which means it has an impact not only on the person who may result, but possibly on his or her descendants. (uncertainty)
=> treatment VS enhancement (where do you draw the line?)
=> tampering with course of evolution/ natural course of human life (against some religous beliefs)
b) driven by economic pursuits
- He JianKui was driven by personal fame and gain
- didnt follow through with regulations and legal processes to develop modified DNA
c) worsens inequality
- For those living in poverty, it is yet another way for the privileged to vault ahead. => only accessible to rich
- inequitable access may create a superhuman race for the privileged

3. proposed solution/safeguards
- government regulations
=> moratorium on human germline editing
-;

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M&M

https://time.com/5509993/nootropics-smart-drugs-brain/?amp=true

Summary:
"Nootropics" in Greek means to "bend or shape the mind". The article expands on whether the consumption of nootropics actually lead to positive benefits to one's mind.

Tensions:
Nootropics contain many nutrients important to one's mind and body
BUT
the nutrients from natural foods cannot fully be replaced by supplements. Instead, the short-term boosts from nootropics could harm one's brain 🤢

Solutions:
Exercise is just BETTER 😎 if u wanna stay healthy, be it physicslly or mentally. (Improve memory, fend off age-related cognitive decline, safest way to strengthen our brain) 🧠

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jiamin kexin
These scientists have decided not to patent their vaccine and in order to make them more accessible and easily replicated, because of their shared philosophy of humanitarianism. This addresses inequality in the distribution of vaccines, and prioritises medical access to profits.

2. low income countries lack the access to vaccines/resources and have low vaccination rates. This new vaccine allows them to produce their own at low costs.

3. The article said to incentivise others to follow suit and make affordable and accessible vaccines for other diseases and viruses

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Show caption
Drs Peter Hotez and Maria Bottazzi, developers of Corbevax. Photograph: Baylor College of Medicine

A new Covid-19 vaccine is being developed by Texas scientists using a decades-old conventional method that will make the production and distribution cheaper and more accessible for countries most affected by the pandemic and where new variants are likely to originate due to low inoculation rates.
What is Biological E, the Indian company producing Corbevax?
The team, led by Drs Peter Hotez and Maria Bottazzi from the Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development at Baylor College of Medicine, has been developing vaccine prototypes for Sars and Mers since 2011, which they reconstructed to create the new Covid vaccine, dubbed Corbevax, or "the world's Covid-19 vaccine".

Although more than 60 other vaccines are in development using the same technology, Bottazzi said their vaccine is unique because they do not intend to patent it, allowing anyone with the capacity to reproduce it.

"Pretty much anybody that can make hepatitis B vaccines or has the capacity to produce microbial-based protein like bacteria or yeast, can replicate what we do," Bottazzi said.

Patent wars over mRNA vaccines have recently heated up. Moderna and the National Institutes of Health are in a dispute over who should get credit for specific discoveries that led to a Covid-19 vaccine which has been delivered to more than 73 million Americans. If Moderna is found to have infringed on the federal government's patent, it could be forced to pay more than $1bn.

At the same time, activists have called for Pfizer and Moderna to share the technology and knowhow for producing their vaccines, including taking the fight to the World Trade Organization. Low-income countries, which have few vaccine research and production facilities, have vaccinated just one in nine people, according to the World Health Organization. The US has fully vaccinated 67% of the population and provided a third vaccine dose to more than one-third.

Corbevax's clinical trial data has yet to be released due to resource constraints, but Texas Children's hospital said the vaccine was over 90% effective against the original Covid-19 strain and over 80% effective against the Delta variant. The vaccine's efficacy against the Omicron variant is currently being tested.

The process to create the vaccine involves the use of yeast - the same method by which hepatitis B vaccines are produced.

The Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson vaccines currently authorized in the US use different technologies, or vaccine "platforms". Moderna and Pfizer use messenger RNA (mRNA) technology. This platform introduces the immune system to Covid-19 by delivering instructions on how to produce its most recognizable feature, the spike proteins which coat its surface. This helps the immune system recognize and fight the virus later, if a person is exposed. Johnson & Johnson's vaccine introduces immune cells to the spike protein through an otherwise harmless cold virus, a technology called viral vector.

The Corbevax vaccine uses a platform called recombinant protein sub-unit technology, which places an actual piece of Covid-19's spike protein in yeast cells. The yeast cells then copy the vital protein and the protein is introduced to the immune system.

"We make the protein, directly and synthetically, in the lab using the yeast system," Bottazzi explained. "We ask the yeast to make a protein that looks just like a protein that is made by the virus. Then we immunize the protein and the body then processes this protein and presents it to the immune system. Therefore, you don't ask your body to do any major manipulation of the coding."

Crucially, storing the Corbevax vaccine only requires standard refrigeration, unlike the Pfizer vaccine, which requires ultra-cold storage in transit.

Biological E, an Indian pharmaceutical company accustomed to producing hepatitis B vaccines with whom Bottazzi's team has a longstanding relationship, has already produced 150m doses of the new Corbevax vaccine and will soon be able to produce 100m doses every month.

After being overlooked by government organizations for funding, Bottazzi said, the developers behind Corbevax relied on philanthropic donations to get them over the finish line. The Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development is an academic and scientific institution in nature, but Bottazzi said developing Corbevax had forced them to stretch their resources in order to gain visibility as a serious candidate for Covid vaccine development.

"We ourselves are learning how to do work that is regulatory-enabling, that enables good quality, good reproduction, good record-keeping ... we mimic as if we were a small biotech or manufacturing entity," she said. "Every technology has pros and cons. Nobody is claiming one is the super-duper, only solution. All the [vaccines] are part of the solution. But when you have a situation of such gravity around the world, you don't pick and choose a solution - you try to use all solutions," Bottazzi said.

Bottazzi said the reason she and her team did not patent the vaccine was because of her team's shared philosophy of humanitarianism and to engage in collaboration with the wider scientific community.

"We want to do good in the world. This was the right thing to do and this is what we morally had to do. We didn't even blink. We didn't think, 'how can we take advantage of this?' You see now that if more like us would have been more attuned to how the world is so inequitable and how we could have helped from the beginning so many places around the world without thinking 'what's going to be in it for me?', we could have basically not even seen these variants arise."

Bottazzi hopes her move will incentivize others to follow suit and make affordable and accessible vaccines for other diseases and viruses, like hookworm.

"We need to break these paradigms that it's only driven by economic impact factors or return of economic investment. We have to look at the return in public health."
Texas

Dr Maria Bottazzi says their vaccine, called Corbevax, is unique because they do not intend to patent it

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Texas scientists' new Covid-19 vaccine is cheaper, easier to make and patent-free

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A new Covid-19 vaccine is being developed by Texas scientists using a decades-old conventional method that will make the production and distribution cheaper and more accessible for countries most affected by the pandemic and where new variants are likely to originate due to low inoculation rates.

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https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/holocaust/experiside.html

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/nazi-medical-experiments

During World War II, in a bid to "cleanse" the German society of individuals viewed as biological threats to the nation's health. The Nazis enlisted the help of physicians and medically trained geneticts to develop racial health policies.

Unethical medical experimentation (without patient consent or any safeguards) was carried out and these cruel human experiments include freezing, dissecting of human brains, bone, muscle and joint transplantation etc.

The Nuremberg Code was created in the aftermath of the discovery of the chem experiments and subsewuent trials to address abusers committed by medical professionals during the Holocaust.
It included the principal of informed consent and required standards for research.

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by Peter Tyson
The Director's Story | Editor's Picks | Previous Sites | Join Us/E-mail | TV/Web Schedule
About NOVA | Teachers | Site Map | Shop | Jobs | Search | To print
PBS Online | NOVA Online | WGBH

© | Updated October 2000 Timeline of Nazi Abuses
Results of Death-Camp Experiments: Should They Be Used?
Exposing Flawed Science | Resources
Transcript | Site Map | Holocaust on Trial Home

Karl Brandt, Hitler's personal physician and Major General Reich Commissioner for Health and Sanitation, was one of 15 defendants found guilty of war crimes at the "Doctors Trial." He was later executed.

The Experiments
Back to Should They Be Used?

During World War II, Nazi doctors conducted as many as 30 different types of experiments on concentration-camp inmates. They performed these studies without the consent of the victims, who suffered indescribable pain, mutilation, permanent disability, or in many cases death as a result. At the Nuremberg "doctor's trial," which brought 23 German doctors to trial immediately after the war, prosecutors found 15 defendants guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity; seven were hung. Here are some of the most notorious experiments:

High altitude In 1942, Sigmund Rascher and others conducted high-altitude experiments on prisoners at Dachau. Eager to find out how best to save German pilots forced to eject at high altitude, they placed inmates into low-pressure chambers that simulated altitudes as high as 68,000 feet and monitored their physiological response as they succumbed and died. Rascher was said to dissect victims' brains while they were still alive to show that high-altitude sickness resulted from the formation of tiny air bubbles in the blood vessels of a certain part of the brain. Of 200 people subjected to these experiments, 80 died outright and the remainder were executed.

Freezing To determine the most effective means for treating German pilots who had become severely chilled from ejecting into the ocean, or German soldiers who suffered extreme exposure on the Russian front, Rascher and others conducted freezing experiments at Dachau. For up to five hours at a time, they placed victims into vats of icy water, either in aviator suits or naked; they took others outside in the freezing cold and strapped them down naked. As the victims writhed in pain, foamed at the mouth, and lost consciousness, the doctors measured changes in the patients' heart rate, body temperature, muscle reflexes, and other factors. When a prisoner's internal body temperature fell to 79.7°F, the doctors tried rewarming him using hot sleeping bags, scalding baths, even naked women forced to copulate with the victim. Some 80 to 100 patients perished during these experiments.

Nazi doctors sliced open the leg of Ravensbruck survivor Jadwiga Dzido (shown here) and deliberately infected the wound with bacteria, dirt, and glass slivers to simulate a battlefield injury. They then treated the wound with sulfanilamide drugs.

Sulfanilamide For the benefit of the German Army, whose frontline soldiers suffered greatly from gas gangrene, a type of progressive gangrene, doctors at the Ravensbruck concentration camp performed studies to test the effectiveness of sulfanilamide and other drugs in curbing such infections. They inflicted battlefield-like wounds in victims, then infected the wounds with bacteria such as streptococcus, tetanus, and gas gangrene. The doctors aggravated the resulting infection by rubbing ground glass and wood shavings into the wound, and they tied off blood vessels on either side of the injury to simulate what would happen to an actual war wound. Victims suffered intense agony and serious injury, and some of them died as a result.

Twins In an effort to find ways to more effectively multiply the German race, Dr. Josef Mengele performed experiments on twins at Auschwitz in hopes of plumbing the secrets of multiple births. After taking all the body measurements and other living data he could from selected twins, Mengele and his collaborators dispatched them with a single injection of chloroform to the heart. Of about 1,000 pairs of twins experimented upon, only about 200 pairs survived.

Six weeks after Americans liberated Buchenwald in April 1945, a guide shows an American soldier human organs the Nazis removed from prisoners.

Poison Researchers at Buchenwald concentration camp developed a method of individual execution by injecting Russian prisoners with phenol and cyanide. Experimenters also tested various poisons on the human body by secreting noxious chemicals in prisoners' food or shooting inmates with poison bullets. Victims who did not die during these experiments were killed to allow the experimenters to perform autopsies.

Tuberculosis To determine if people had any natural immunities to tuberculosis, and to develop a vaccine against the disease, Dr. Kurt Heissmeyer injected live tubercle bacilli (bacteria that are a major cause of TB) into the lungs of inmates at the Neuengamme concentration camp. About 200 adult subjects died, and Heissmeyer had 20 children from Auschwitz hung in an effort to hide evidence of the experiments from approaching Allied forces.

Phosgene In an attempt to find an antidote to phosgene, a toxic gas used as a weapon during World War I, Nazi doctors exposed 52 concentration-camp prisoners to the gas at Fort Ney near Strasbourg, France. Phosgene gas causes extreme irritation to the lungs. Many of the prisoners, who according to German records were already weak and malnourished, suffered pulmonary edema after exposure, and four of them died from the experiments.

Nazis at Ravensbruck concentration camp amputated limbs from prisoners in useless attempts to transplant them onto other inmates. Many of the victims perished as a result.

Bone, muscle, and joint transplantation To learn if a limb or joint from one person could be successfully attached to another who had lost that limb or joint, experimenters at Ravensbruck amputated legs and shoulders from inmates in useless attempts to transplant them onto other victims. They also removed sections of bones, muscles, and nerves from prisoners to study regeneration of these body parts. Victims suffered excruciating pain, mutilation, and permanent disability as a result.

Sterilization To come up with an effective means of sterilizing millions of people with a minimum of time and effort, doctors at Auschwitz, Ravensbruck, and elsewhere conducted experiments on both men and women. They radiated the genitals of young men, then castrated them to study the resulting changes in their testes. A woman had caustic substances forced into her cervix or uterus, which caused horrible pain, bleeding, and bursting spasms in the stomach. The thousands who were sterilized suffered untold mental and physical anguish.

Artificial insemination After hearing that Dr. Carl Clauberg had successfully treated a high-level SS officer's infertile wife, Heinrich Himmler ordered Clauberg to conduct artificial insemination experiments. Some 300 women at Auschwitz subsequently underwent artificial insemination at the hands of Clauberg, who reportedly taunted victims strapped down before him by informing them that he had just inseminated them with animal sperm and that monsters were now growing in their wombs.

Seawater Dr. Hans Eppinger and others at Dachau conducted experiments on how to make seawater drinkable. The doctors forced roughly 90 Gypsies to drink only seawater while also depriving them of food. The Gypsies became so dehydrated that they reportedly licked floors after they had been mopped just to get a drop of fresh water. The experiments caused enormous pain and suffering and resulted in serious bodily injury.

Peter Tyson is editor in chief of NOVA Online.

Photos: (1) Hedy Epstein, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives; (2,3) National Archives, courtesy of USHMM Photo Archives; (4) Courtesy of the U.S. Government Printing Office.

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NOVA Online | Holocaust on Trial | The Experiments

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by Peter Tyson The Director's Story | Editor's Picks | Previous Sites | Join Us/E-mail | TV/Web Schedule About NOVA | Teachers | Site Map | Shop | Jobs | Search | To print PBS Online | NOVA Online | WGBH © | Updated October 2000 Timeline of Nazi Abuses Results of Death-Camp Experiments: Should They Be Used?

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Clinical Trials for Vaccine Development 

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Clinical Trials for Vaccine Development 

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CRISPR is a powerful tool for editing genomes, meaning it allows researchers to easily alter DNA sequences and modify gene function. It has many potential applications, including correcting genetic defects, treating and preventing the spread of diseases, and improving the growth and resilience of crops. However, despite its promise, the technology also raises ethical concerns such as going against the natural course of human evolution. Thus, altering God’s will.

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https://www.theguardian.com/news/2019/apr/11/china-hi-tech-war-on-muslim-minority-xinjiang-uighurs-surveillance-face-recognition
The article details an account from an Uighur man who was subjected to an uncalled for “health check” involving collecting several types of biometric data which was later used to put him on a blacklist. After this he was transported to a detention centre which deprived him of food and sleep, he was also subjected to verbal abuse and hours of interrogation. Most Uighurs in the detention centers are on their way to serving long prison sentences or to indefinite captivity in one of the many internment camps under the guise of “re-education”. This particular person was lucky and was let out after two weeks. However, soon only realising that he had been placed under a blacklist under the integrated joint operations platform(ijop), a regional data system that uses AI to monitor the countless checkpoints in and around XinJiang’s cities. Any attempts to enter public institutions (hospitals,banks etc) would trigger the ijop to alert the police. Although he was officially a free man, his biometrics and digital history chains him in place.

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n mid-2017, Alim, a Uighur man in his 20s, returned to China from studying abroad. As soon as he landed back in the country, he was pulled off the plane by police officers. He was told his trip abroad meant that he was now under suspicion of being "unsafe". The police administered what they call a "health check", which involved collecting several types of biometric data, including DNA, blood type, fingerprints, voice recordings and face scans - a process that all adults in the Uighur autonomous region of Xinjiang, in north-west China, are expected to undergo.

After his "health check", Alim was transported to one of the hundreds of detention centres that dot north-west China. These centres have become an important part of what Xi Jinping's government calls the "people's war on terror", a campaign launched in 2014, which focuses on Xinjiang, a region with a population of roughly 25 million people, just under half of whom are Uighur Muslims. As part of this campaign, the Chinese government has come to treat almost all expressions of Uighur Islamic faith as signs of potential religious extremism and ethnic separatism. Since 2017 alone, more than 1 million Turkic Muslims, including Uighurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and others, have moved through detention centres.

At the detention centre, Alim was deprived of sleep and food, and subjected to hours of interrogation and verbal abuse. "I was so weakened through this process that at one point during my interrogation I began to laugh hysterically," he said when we spoke. Other detainees report being placed in stress positions, tortured with electric shocks, and kept in isolation for long periods. When he wasn't being interrogated, Alim was kept in a tiny cell with 20 other Uighur men.

Many of the detainees had been arrested for having supposedly committed religious and political transgressions through social media apps on their smartphones, which Uighurs are required to produce at checkpoints around Xinjiang. Although there was often no real evidence of a crime according to any legal standard, the digital footprint of unauthorised Islamic practice, or even a connection to someone who had committed one of these vague violations, was enough to land Uighurs in a detention centre. The mere fact of having a family member abroad, or of travelling outside China, as Alim had, often resulted in detention.

Most Uighurs in the detention centres are on their way to serving long prison sentences, or to indefinite captivity in a growing network of internment camps, which the Chinese state has described as facilities for "transformation through education". These camps, which function as medium-security prisons and, in some cases, forced-labour factories, attempt to train Uighurs to disavow their Islamic identity and embrace the secular principles of the Chinese state. They forbid the use of the Uighur language and instead offer drills in Mandarin, the language of China's Han majority. Only a handful of detainees who are not Chinese citizens have been fully released from this "re-education" system.

Police on patrol in Kashgar, in the Xinjiang region. Photograph: Tom Phillips/The Guardian

Alim was relatively lucky: he was let out after only two weeks. (He later learned that a relative had intervened in his case.) But a few weeks later, when he went to meet a friend for lunch at a mall in his home city, he had another shock. At a security checkpoint at the entrance to the mall, Alim scanned the photo on his government-issued identification card, and presented himself before a security camera equipped with facial recognition software. An alarm sounded. The security guards let him pass, but within a few minutes he was approached by police officers, who then took him into custody.

Alim learned that he had been placed on a blacklist maintained by the Integrated Joint Operations Platform (Ijop), a regional data system that uses AI to monitor the countless checkpoints in and around Xinjiang's cities. Any attempt to enter public institutions such as hospitals, banks, parks or shopping centres, or to cross beyond the boundaries of his local police precinct, would trigger the Ijop to alert police. The system had profiled him and predicted that he was a potential terrorist.

There was little Alim could do. Officers told him he should "just stay at home" if he wanted to avoid detention again. Although he was officially free, Alim's biometrics and his digital history were being used to lock him in place. "I'm so angry and afraid at the same time," he told me. He was haunted by his data.

hina's version of the "war on terror" depends less on drones and strikes by elite military units than facial recognition software and machine learning algorithms. Its targets are not foreigners but domestic minority populations who appear to threaten the Chinese Communist party's authoritarian rule. In Xinjiang, the web of surveillance reaches from cameras on buildings, to the chips inside mobile devices, to Uighurs' very physiognomy. Face scanners and biometric checkpoints track their movements almost everywhere.

Other programmes scan Uighurs' digital communications, looking for suspect patterns, and flagging religious speech or even a lack of fervour in using Mandarin. Deep-learning systems search in real time through video feeds capturing millions of faces, building an archive that can supposedly help identify suspicious behaviour in order to predict who will become an "unsafe" actor. Actions that can trigger these "computer vision" technologies include dressing in an Islamic fashion and failing to attend nationalistic flag-raising ceremonies. All of these technological systems are brought together in the Ijop, which is constantly learning from the behaviours of the Uighurs it watches.

In her recent study on the rise of "surveillance capitalism", the Harvard scholar Shoshana Zuboff notes that consumers are constantly generating valuable data that can be turned into profitable predictions about our preferences and future behaviours. In the Uighur region, this logic has been taken to an extreme. The power - and potential profitability - of the predictive technologies that purport to keep Xinjiang safe derive from their unfettered access to Uighurs' digital lives and physical movements. From the perspective of China's security-industrial establishment, the principal purpose of Uighur life is to generate data, which can then be used to further refine these systems of surveillance and control.

Controlling the Uighurs has also become a test case for marketing Chinese technological prowess around the world. A hundred government agencies and companies from two dozen countries, including the US, France, Israel and the Philippines, now participate in the highly influential annual China-Eurasia Security Expo in Urumqi, the capital of the Uighur region. The ethos at the expo, and in the Chinese techno-security industry as a whole, is that Muslim populations need to be managed and made productive. Over the past five years, the people's war on terror has allowed a number of Chinese tech startups to achieve unprecedented levels of growth. In just the last two years, the state has invested an estimated $7.2bn in techno-security in Xinjiang. As a spokesperson for one of these tech startups put it, 60% of the world's Muslim-majority nations are part of China's premier international development project, the Belt and Road Initiative, so there is "unlimited market potential" for the type of population-control technology they are developing in Xinjiang.

Some of the technologies pioneered in Xinjiang have already found customers in authoritarian states as far away as sub-Saharan Africa. In 2018, CloudWalk, a Guangzhou-based tech startup that has received more than $301m in state funding, finalised an agreement with Zimbabwe's government to build a national "mass facial recognition programme" in order to address "social security issues". (CloudWalk has not revealed how much the agreement is worth.) Freedom of movement through airports, railways and bus stations throughout Zimbabwe will now be managed through a facial database integrated with other kinds of biometric data. In effect, the Uighur homeland has become an incubator for China's "terror capitalism".

here was a time when the internet seemed to promise a brighter future for China's Uighurs. When I arrived in Urumqi in 2011 to conduct my first year of ethnographic fieldwork, the region had just been wired with 3G mobile data networks. When I returned in 2014, it seemed as though nearly all adults in the city had a smartphone. Suddenly, Uighur cultural figures who the government subsequently labelled "unsafe", such as the pop star Ablajan, developed followings that numbered in the millions.

Most unsettling, from the perspective of the state, unsanctioned Uighur religious teachers based in China and Turkey also developed a deep influence. Since Mao's Religious Reform Movement of 1958, the state had limited Uighurs' access to mosques, Islamic funerary practices, religious knowledge and other Muslim communities. There were virtually no Islamic schools outside of government control, no imams who were not approved by the state. Children under the age of 18 were forbidden to enter mosques. But as social media spread through the Uighur homeland over the course of the last decade, it opened up a virtual space to explore what it meant to be Muslim. It reinforced a sense that the first sources of Uighur identity were their faith and language, their claim to a native way of life, and their membership in a Turkic Muslim community stretching from Urumqi to Istanbul. Rather than being seen as perpetually lacking Han appearance and culture, they could find in their renewed Turkic and Islamic values a cosmopolitan and contemporary identity. Food, movies, music and clothing, imported from Turkey and Dubai, became markers of distinction. Women began to veil themselves. Men began to pray five times a day. They stopped drinking and smoking. Some began to view music, dancing and state television as influences to be avoided.

The Han officials I met during my fieldwork referred to this rise in technologically disseminated religious piety as the "Talibanisation" of the Uighur population. Along with Han settlers, they felt increasingly unsafe travelling to the region's Uighur-majority areas, and uneasy in the presence of pious Turkic Muslims. The officials cited incidents that carried the hallmarks of religiously motivated violence - a knife attack carried out by a group of Uighurs at a train station in Kunming; trucks driven by Uighurs through crowds in Beijing and Urumqi - as a sign that the entire Uighur population was falling under the sway of terrorist ideologies.

Workers walk by the perimeter fence of an 'education centre' in Xinjiang. Photograph: Thomas Peter/Reuters

But, as dangerous as the rise of Uighur social media seemed to Han officials, it also presented them with a new means of control. On 5 July 2009, Uighur high school and college students had used Facebook and Uighur-language blogs to organise a protest demanding justice for Uighur workers who were killed by their Han colleagues at a toy factory in eastern China. Thousands of Uighurs took to the streets of Urumqi, waving Chinese flags and demanding that the government respond to the deaths of their comrades. When they were violently confronted by armed police, many of the Uighurs responded by turning over buses and beating Han bystanders. In the end, more than 190 people were reported killed, most of them Han. Over the weeks that followed, hundreds, perhaps thousands, of young Uighurs were disappeared by the police. The internet was shut off in the region for nearly 10 months, and Facebook and Twitter were blocked across the country.

Soon after the internet came back online in 2010 - with the notable absence of Facebook, Twitter and other non-Chinese social media applications - state security, higher education and private industry began to collaborate on breaking Uighur internet autonomy. Much of the Uighur-language internet was transformed from a virtual free society into a zone where government technology could learn to predict criminal behaviour. Broadly defined new anti-terrorism laws, first drafted in 2014, turned nearly all crimes committed by Uighurs, from stealing a Han neighbour's sheep to protesting against land seizures, into forms of terrorism. Religious piety, which the new laws referred to as "extremism", was conflated with religious violence.

The Xinjiang security industry mushroomed from a handful of private firms to approximately 1,400 companies employing tens of thousands of workers, ranging from low-level Uighur security guards to Han camera and telecommunications technicians to coders and designers. The Xi administration declared a state of emergency in the region, the people's war on terror began, and Islamophobia was institutionalised.

n 2017, after three years of operating a "hard strike" policy that turned Xinjiang into what many considered an open-air prison - which involved instituting a passbook system that restricted Uighurs' internal travel, and deploying hundreds of thousands of security forces to monitor the families of those who had been disappeared or killed by the state - the government turned to a fresh strategy. A new regional party secretary named Chen Quanguo introduced a policy of "transforming" Uighurs.

Local authorities began to describe the "three evil forces" of "religious extremism, ethnic separatism and violent terrorism" as three interrelated "ideological cancers". Because the digital sphere had allowed unauthorised forms of Islam to flourish, officials called for AI-enabled technology to crack down on these evils. Party leadership began to incentivise Chinese tech firms to develop technologies that could help the government control Uighur society. Billions of dollars in government contracts were awarded to build "smart" security systems across the Uighur region.

The turn toward "transformation" coincided with breakthroughs in the AI-assisted computer systems that the public security bureau rolled out in 2017 and brought together in the Ijop. The Chinese startup Meiya Pico began to market software to local and regional governments that was developed using state-supported research and could detect Uighur language text and Islamic symbols embedded in images. The company also developed programmes for automating the transcription and translation of Uighur voice messaging. The company Hikvision advertised tools that could automate the identification of Uighur faces based on physiological phenotypes. Other companies devised programmes that would perform automated searches of Uighurs' internet activity and then compare the data it gleaned to school, job, banking, medical and biometric records, looking for predictors of aberrant behaviour.

The rollout of this new technology required a great deal of manpower and technical training. More than 100,000 new police officers were hired. One of their jobs was to conduct the sort of "health check" Alim underwent, creating biometric records for almost every human being in the region. Face signatures were created by scanning individuals from a variety of different angles as they made different facial expressions; the result was a high-definition portfolio of personal emotions. All Uighurs were required to install nanny apps , which monitored everything they said, read and wrote, and everyone they connected with, on their smartphones.

A police officer checks the identity card of a man as security forces keep watch in a street in Kashgar. Photograph: Thomas Peter/Reuters

Higher-level police officers, most of whom were Han, were given the job of conducting qualitative assessments of the Muslim population as a whole - providing more complex, interview-based survey data for Ijop's deep-learning system. In face-to-face interviews, these neighbourhood police officers assessed the more than 14 million Muslim-minority people in Xinjiang and determined if they should be given the rating of "safe", "average", or "unsafe". They determined this by categorising the person using 10 or more categories, including whether or not the person was Uighur, whether they prayed regularly, had an immediate relative living abroad, or had taught their children about Islam in their home. Those who were determined to be "unsafe" were then sent to the detention centres, where they were interrogated and asked to confess their crimes and name others who were also "unsafe". In this manner, the officers determined which individuals should be slotted for the "transformation through education" internment camps.

Many Muslims who passed their first assessment were subsequently detained because someone else named them as "unsafe". In thousands of cases, years of WeChat history was used as evidence of the need for Uighur suspects to be "transformed". The state also assigned an additional 1.1 million Han and Uighur "big brothers and sisters" to conduct week-long assessments on Uighur families as uninvited guests in Uighur homes. Over the course of these stays, the relatives tested the "safe" qualities of those Uighurs who remained outside of the camp system by forcing them to participate in activities forbidden by certain forms of Islamic piety, such as drinking, smoking and dancing. They looked for any sign of resentment or any lack of enthusiasm in Chinese patriotic activities. They gave the children candy so that they would tell them the truth about what their parents thought.

All of this information was entered into databases and then fed back into the Ijop. The government's hope is that the Ijop will, over time, run with less and less human guidance. Even now, it is always running in the background of Uighur life, always learning.

n the tech community in the US, there is some scepticism regarding the viability of AI-assisted computer vision technology in China. Many experts I've spoken to from the AI policy world point to an article by the scholar Jathan Sadowski called " Potemkin AI", which highlights the failures of Chinese security technology to deliver what it promises. They frequently bring up the way a system in Shenzhen meant to identify the faces of jaywalkers and flash them on giant screens next to busy intersections cannot keep up with the faces of all the jaywalkers; as a result, human workers sometimes have to manually gather the data used for public shaming. They point out that Chinese tech firms and government agencies have hired hundreds of thousands of low-paid police officers to monitor internet traffic and watch banks of video monitors. As with the theatre of airport security rituals in the US, many of these experts argue that it is the threat of surveillance, rather than the surveillance itself, that causes people to modify their behaviour.

Yet while there is a good deal of evidence to support this scepticism, a notable rise in the automated detection of internet-based Islamic activity, which has resulted in the detention of hundreds of thousands of Uighurs, also points to the real effects of the implementation of AI-assisted surveillance and policing in Xinjiang. Even western experts at Google and elsewhere admit that Chinese tech companies now lead the world in these computer-vision technologies, due to the way the state funds Chinese companies to collect, use and report on the personal data of hundreds of millions of users across China.

The Han officials I spoke with during my fieldwork in Xinjiang often refused to acknowledge the way disappearances, frequent police shootings of young Uighur men, and state seizures of Uighur land might have motivated earlier periods of Uighur resistance. They did not see correlations between limits on Uighur religious education, restrictions on Uighur travel and widespread job discrimination on the one hand, and the rise in Uighur desires for freedom, justice and religiosity on the other. Because of the crackdown, Han officials have seen a profound diminishment of Islamic belief and political resistance in Uighur social life. They're proud of the fervour with which Uighurs are learning the "common language" of the country, abandoning Islamic holy days and embracing Han cultural values. From their perspective, the implementation of the new security systems has been a monumental success.

A middle-aged Uighur businessman from Hotan, whom I will call Dawut, told me that, behind the checkpoints, the new security system has hollowed out Uighur communities. The government officials, civil servants and tech workers who have come to build, implement and monitor the system don't seem to perceive Uighurs' humanity. The only kind of Uighur life that can be recognised by the state is the one that the computer sees. This makes Uighurs like Dawut feel as though their lives only matter as data - code on a screen, numbers in camps. They have adapted their behaviour, and slowly even their thoughts, to the system.

"Uighurs are alive, but their entire lives are behind walls," Dawut said softly. "It is like they are ghosts living in another world."
Some names have been changed. A longer version of this article first appeared in Logic, a new magazine about technology

Follow the Long Read on Twitter at @gdnlongread, and sign up to the long read weekly email here.

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China's hi-tech war on its Muslim minority

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n mid-2017, Alim, a Uighur man in his 20s, returned to China from studying abroad. As soon as he landed back in the country, he was pulled off the plane by police officers. He was told his trip abroad meant that he was now under suspicion of being "unsafe".

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Clinical Trials for Baccine developments

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Clinical Trials for Baccine developments

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Attocis amd Benjamin

https://www.clinicaltrialsarena.com/news/moderna-eyes-covid-19-flu-booster-2023/
1. Summary abt Vaccine booster
2. Issues --- Wabts of consumer (Moderna supposed to be more expensive than Pizer and also better YAY)--- but who is willing to pay?
--- Why prolong pandemic w more vaccines boosters???

3. Need to be complemented w tougher measures and more innvotions to keep us w eveoling mutants and counter misimformation against vaccines

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Moderna eyes combined Covid-19, flu booster by 2023

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Moderna is aiming to market a Covid-19 and influenza booster vaccine combo within the next two years, CEO Stéphane Bancel has said.

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https://m.tribuneindia.com/news/health/in-rare-medical-feat-57-yr-old-us-man-gets-pig-heart-in-world-first-transplant-362011

Pig to human transplant WOW

so basically the summary is the pig heart being given to a human on death row and how safe is it noting that there culd be adverse reactions such as -ve repercussions and adverse reactions such as mass rejections leading to more health ailments and the ailments being less serious and the form of which could lead to dealth-- How safe is it to use such methods of live saving

Proposed solution js to OFC need human and patient concent right (esp if that patient unconcious then need  familu concent(This one in Am so like IDK their policy but instead in SG need AMD)

- OF course one person ony lah so IDC but in LT ethical more, cos more consequences WE DONT KNOW OF (Same arg as QAnon theory and vonspirists advocating against ....)

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2018/national/how-religion-is-coming-to-terms-with-modern-fertility-methods/

This article highlights the religious contentions and ethical concerns that revolves IVF. Although a process that allows infertile couples an opportunity to procreate. the roman catholic church belives that this process is unethical as it involves ‘picking and choosing’ which embryos are ‘suitable’ to live as christianity that life begins at conception. Furthermore they argue that since only one embryo is chosen to be conceived, the leftover embroys which are trashed are a ‘waste of life’ as they are already seen as a life. The article raises up the different questions IVF raises such as when life begins, who is the mother, is it the woman who donated the egg or is it the woman who gives birth to the fetus. This article further emphasises how many reigious organisations are relooking at their stringent requirements regarding assisted reproduction and becoming more accepting towards IVF and ends off on a hopeful note.

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BROOKLYN, N.Y. - Esther Friedman held the Book of Psalms with both hands as she peered over her glasses at the fertility lab monitor. There were eight beautiful round eggs, retrieved from a young woman earlier that day.

"A good number," Friedman said, nodding.

A technician grabbed a long glass tube, filled it with sperm and, within a few minutes, the eggs were fertilized. Eight potential new lives had just been conceived.

Friedman - an Orthodox Jewish rabbinical observer hired by the prospective parents - took a step back, lowered her eyes and began to pray.

Forty years ago this July, the world's first "test tube" baby was born at a British hospital in the industrial city of Oldham, heralding a radical change in the creation of human life. Until Louise Joy Brown arrived, hopeful parents had been at the mercy of fate, and a barren marriage could feel like divine punishment.

Afterward, as one of the doctors involved in Brown's birth put it, it seemed that science - not God - was in charge.

Since then, in vitro fertilization, or IVF, and related technologies have produced some 7 million babies who might never have existed - roughly the combined population of Paris, Nairobi and Kyoto - and the world's fertility clinics have blossomed into a $17 billion business.

The procedures have amplified profound questions for the world's theologians: When does life begin? If it begins at conception, is it a sin to destroy a fertilized egg? What defines a parent? Is the mother the woman who provides the egg or the woman who gives birth? What defines a marriage? If a man's sperm fertilizes an egg from a woman who is not his wife, does that constitute adultery?

The moral questions are rapidly becoming more complex. Researchers are working to advance gene-editing tools that would allow parents to choose or "correct for" certain preferred characteristics; to create artificial wombs that could incubate fetuses outside the body for nine months; and to perfect techniques to produce "three-parent" babies who share genetic material from more than two people.

The risks, both scientific and moral, are enormous - particularly with gene editing, which could be used to produce babies with superhuman eyesight, speed and intelligence. "Off target" effects could result in fundamental changes not just to human bodies but to human nature.

Some religiousleaders have objected to using gene editing on embryos or in ways that could affect future generations, arguing the human genome is sacred and editing it violates God's plan for humanity. The U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine have invited religious critiques of the technology, and the Vatican is convening meetings to discuss its moral implications, including one this week in Rome.

On the guest list is Harvard geneticist George Church, who helped launch the Human Genome Project to map human DNA and is part of a team that announced plans in 2016 to use the gene-editing tool CRISPR to create synthetic human genomes to advance medical research. Church said he believes critics from the faith community will come to accept gene-editing technology, just as religious leaders eventually adapted to the discoveries of Galileo, Copernicus and Darwin.

"In the Bible, it says we are given dominion over the Earth," Church said. "Inventing newer and newer advanced technologies is almost a key component of human nature."

Most majorreligions have indeed come to tolerate - and even embrace - IVF, which was originally viewed with equal alarm. But the increasingly commonplace procedure is still condemned at the highest levels of the Catholic Church.

"Technology is a great thing, but technology does change us," said the Rev. Michael J.K. Fuller, executive director of the Secretariat of Doctrine and Canonical Affairs for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. "At some point, we need to ask - how much is it changing us, and is that a good thing?"

'A blessed event'

The world's 7.6 billion people practice an estimated 4,200 religions, each with various ideas about the soul and human destiny. So when British scientists Patrick Steptoe and Robert Edwards helped produce the first IVF baby on July 25, 1978, the event was viewed through heavy filters of wonder and suspicion.

Newspaper and TV reports recognized the birth of a child conceived in vitro - literally "in glass" - as a milestone in human history, akin to Neil Armstrong's walk on the moon. London's Evening News declared little 5-pound, 12-ounce Louise Brown a "Superbabe." Newsweek compared her birth with a "first coming." The New York Daily News wondered, "Test tube birth: a blessed event?"

Some faith leaders - especially Catholics - expressed grave misgivings and concern that the birth was unnatural, immoral and possibly dangerous. Some wondered whether children born through IVF might be superhuman or exceptionally frail or plagued by unforeseen defects introduced by the process.

Brown's parents, who had been trying to conceive for nine years, saw divine intervention.

"Louise is, truly, a gift from God," Lesley Brown tearfully told reporters. Her husband, John, added: "I am not a religious man, but I thank God that I heard our little girl cry for the first time."

Steptoe emphasized the mundaneness of the science, arguing he was neither a wizard nor Dr. Frankenstein.

"We have merely done what many people try to do in all kinds of medicine - to help nature," Steptoe said. "We found nature could not put an egg and sperm together, so we did it."

Edwards, who won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 2010 for the breakthrough, was more direct in challenging critics in the religious establishment. In a rare interview in 2003, he told the London Times the experiments were "about more than infertility."

"I wanted to find out exactly who was in charge, whether it was God Himself or whether it was scientists in the laboratory," he said.

He was confident of the answer: "It was us."

A long debate

Numerous research teams quickly set out to replicate the breakthrough. Candice Reed, Australia's first IVF baby, was born in 1980. Elizabeth Jordan Carr, the first American, followed in 1981.

In those early years, scholars from the world's major religions expressed uneasiness about IVF. Some faith communities were quicker to accept assisted reproduction - including within the Hindu, Buddhist and Protestant traditions. In other places, many couples were left waiting for a signal from religious leaders.

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Egypt's Gad El-Haq Ali Gad El-Haq, a grand imam, was among the first major Muslim leaders to take a clear stand. In 1980, he issued a fatwa, or ruling, permitting IVF and similar procedures, so long as they involved a husband and a wife and no eggs or sperm from a third party.

The grand imam compared sterility with a disease and - noting the prophet Muhammad spoke of the need to seek remedy for disease - concluded IVF is permissible as a cure.

If a "trustworthy physician recommends in vitro fertilization and shall be responsible for its appropriateness, then it is permissible and obligatory as a treatment of a woman who has pregnancy impediments," El-Haq wrote, according to a translation published by Marcia C. Inhorn, a Yale medical anthropologist.

Nearly two decades later, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of Iran weighed in, loosening restrictions further for his Shiite Muslim followers. For example, men were permitted to engage in "mut'a" marriage to egg donors - a temporary union - to take advantage of technological advances without the taint of adultery.

Today, IVF is a widely accepted intervention in the Muslim world, and El-Haq's fatwa is prominently displayed on many clinic walls.

'Lost' embryos

The Vatican saw things differently. When Louise Brown was born, Cardinal Albino Luciani, who would soon become Pope John Paul I, congratulated her parents and wished the baby a happy and blessed life. He also said IVF raised many questions that would require a deeper moral response.

Nine years later, in 1987, the church issued the "Donum Vitae" (the Gift of Life), a guidance document on biomedical issues that has become the definitive Catholic teachingon IVF. In it, the church divided fertility treatments into two categories: Those that help achieve pregnancy through sex - fertility drugs, ovulation charts, surgery to remove blockages - are moral. Those that replace sex with technology, including IVF and artificial insemination, are immoral.

The division reflects the church's view that the physical expression of love within marriage is godly and that sex alone can produce a child who is loved unconditionally as a person independent of the parents' will and desires. Techniques like IVF end up "producing" a child in a lab where the parents are completely absent.

"The birth of a baby is always reason for joy. But the question was, what did they do to get there, and what does that mean?" said Richard M. Doerflinger, a scholar who recently retired from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, where he served for 36 years as a liaison to Congress on bioethics.

The other primary objection to IVF involves the treatment of fertilized eggs as "products" in a marketplace, as well as their routine creation and destruction. The church teaches that life begins at the moment of conception, and it has condemned the destruction of embryos as an evil on par with abortion and euthanasia.

Despite his liberalism on some issues, the current pope has been unwavering on the subject.

"We are living in a time of experimentation with life. But a bad experiment," Pope Francis said in 2014 shortly after he was elected to his position. "Making children rather than accepting them as a gift, as I said. Playing with life. Be careful because this is a sin against the Creator."

Much like church teaching on contraception, the guidance on IVF is out of step with public opinion in the United States. The Pew Research Center found in 2013 that, while Americans are divided on the morality of abortion, nearly 80 percent of U.S. adults consider IVF morally acceptable or not a moral issue - a finding that holds regardless of gender, political affiliation or religion.

John S. Grabowski, director of moral theology at Catholic University, acknowledged "a disconnect between official church teaching and Catholics'practice." In interviews, Catholic couples who have undergone IVF said they felt a successful birth had been blessed by God or was otherwise "meant to be."

Still, many Catholics are troubled by the destruction of embryos.

Ariannet Vanas of Boston struggled with the idea of IVF because she knew the Vatican disapproved. Ultimately, she said, she concluded God would not "judge us because we want to be a family."

After her twins were born six years ago, doctors told Vanas, 39, she would be unable to sustain another pregnancy. So she removed the laboratory tubes containing her unused embryos from cryo-storage and arranged them next to pictures of grandparents and other relatives who had died.

"It kind of weighs on you," she said, "the journey that was needed."

The rabbi and the doctor

Some of the first scholarly writings about IVF from Jewish experts were also negative. Rabbi Eliezer Yehuda Waldenberg, one of the most important authorities of his generation on medical issues, wrote that a baby produced from the procedure was not related to his biological parents. Rabbi Moses Feinstein, known for his writings about women's issues, raised questions about the waste of "seed," or semen.

Attitudes began to change with greater understanding of the procedure. And since the soul does not enter the embryo until 40 days after conception, according to some interpretations of Jewish scripture, unused embryos did not raise the same moral questions. Many Jewish leaders began to actively encourage assisted reproduction, viewing it as a way to heed God's instruction to "be fruitful and multiply."

Technical worries remained, however: Could a woman's eggs be joined with the wrong man's sperm? The solution was rabbinical observers such as Friedman who supervise fertility clinics to make sure they conform to Jewish law and there are no questions about the child's lineage.

The idea originated in Israel, where IVF is universally covered by national health insurance. Working with Friedman and Rabbi Avrohom Friedlander, the Genesis Fertility and Reproductive Medicine clinic in Brooklyn was among the first American clinics to adopt the practice to meet the needs of its large population of Orthodox and Hasidic patients.

"Religious couples who go through infertility, no matter what religion, suffer because it feels like divine punishment," clinic founder Richard Grazi said. "And that makes everything more dramatic and painful."

Monitoring IVF is similar in intensity to certifying kosher restaurants, Friedlander said: Religious observers keep the keys to cryo-tanks where frozen eggs, sperm and embryos are stored and must be present whenever lab technicians handle genetic material. They verify labels and make sure separate surfaces and sometimes equipment are used to avoid mix-ups.

While there are many industry protocols to ensure the integrity of the IVF process, Friedlander said, "rabbis were more comfortable having a divine presence" in the lab.

"When you are dealing with God's creation, you want to make as sure as possible that things are being done right," he said.

Friedman, 63, a mother of six, grandmother to 29 and great-grandmother to one, said she got into the work after seeing so many in her community suffer from infertility.

"I believe in a higher being and that He is good and will help us," she said.

Esther Fixler, who lives near New York, was among the first patients to use the rabbinical monitoring process. Fixler spent a decade trying to get pregnant before coming to Genesis, where she quickly learned her chances of conceiving were abysmally low. In an outburst of emotion, she told Grazi to throw away her genetic material.

Instead, Grazi told her to pray and to have faith. Within a few weeks, she was pregnant with the first of her three children.

"When the pregnancy took, I thought, 'This is God.' I had seen it in black and white, whether I had a chance or not," said Fixler, now 51. "But it wasn't for human understanding how this happened."

Her son, now 20, was married in December 2016. Three months ago, he and his wife welcomed their first child, a girl, Fixler's first grandchild.

Ellie Silverman in Washington contributed to this report.

Design and development by Joanne Lee. Graphics by Aaron Steckelberg. Photo editing by Wendy Galietta.
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How religion is coming to terms with modern fertility methods

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BROOKLYN, N.Y. - Esther Friedman held the Book of Psalms with both hands as she peered over her glasses at the fertility lab monitor. There were eight beautiful round eggs, retrieved from a young woman earlier that day. "A good number," Friedman said, nodding.

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Irresponsible research on CRISPR will greatly affect the general CRISPR research and development. Instead of benefiting the population, there could be unexpected consequences like having hereditary genes that no one carries in the world. Further questions the ethical use of science and technology.

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A Chinese court has sentenced He Jiankui, the biophysicist who announced that he had created the world's first gene-edited babies, to three years in prison for "illegal medical practice", and handed down shorter sentences to two colleagues who assisted him. The punishments put to rest speculation over whether the Chinese government would bring criminal charges for an act that shocked the world, and are likely to deter others from similar behaviour, say Chinese scientists.

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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-00001-y
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What CRISPR-baby prison sentences mean for research

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A Chinese court has sentenced He Jiankui, the biophysicist who announced that he had created the world's first gene-edited babies, to three years in prison for "illegal medical practice", and handed down shorter sentences to two colleagues who assisted him.

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https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/health/nus-researchers-develop-new-prosthetic-heart-valve-offer-alternative-to-open-heart

Summary: A prosthetic heart valve is develop for patients with mitral regurgitation where the mitral valve on the left side does not close properly. An open surgery is no longer needed to treat the condition. Furthermore, open heart surgery includes stopping the heart which means a higher risk for death. Instead, a minimally invasive procedure in which a small incision is only needed to insert the prosthetic heart valve using a catheter.

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NUS researchers develop new prosthetic heart valve, offer alternative to open heart surgery

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Researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have developed a novel prosthetic heart valve that offers a less risky alternative to open heart surgery. Read more at straitstimes.com.

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The research of August Hirt at Strasbourg University also intended to establish "Jewish racial inferiority."  Additional gruesome experiments meant to further Nazi racial goals included a series of gruesome experiments to improve racial genes

Scientists tested a number of methods in an effort to develop an efficient and inexpensive procedure for the mass sterilisation

View This Term in the Glossary

and other groups Nazi leaders considered to be racially or genetically undesirable.

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Digitally Implants on Human Beings for use as a Vaccine Passport

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Digitally Implants on Human Beings for use as a Vaccine Passport

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A Swedish start-up has created scannable digital implants that display one's COVID vaccine passport.
The technology involves a small, grain-sized implant being inserted under the skin.
When the implant is scanned with a smartphone, one's COVID-19 vaccination details and test results can be viewed via a PDF.

A Swedish start-up has created a microchip that can be implanted into the skin, displaying details of one's COVID vaccine passport when scanned.

The invention, created by tech firm Dsruptive Subdermals, involves a pre-programmed scannable implant 2 millimeters by 16 millimeters in size being inserted just beneath the skin.

"I have a chip implant in my arm, and I have programmed the chip so that I have my COVID passport on the chip, and the reason is that I always want to have it accessible," Hannes Sjoblad, managing director of Dsruptive Subdermals, told the AFP.

The novelty of the technology makes some people uncomfortable enough to label it creepy, dystopian or even apocalyptic. More conspiracy theories and controversies could be brought up surrounding the invention of such technology with some noting that involuntary microchipping via vaccination was a prominent conspiracy theory last year. Religious communities may also not readily accept this invention. In Christian communities, some may draw parallels to this technology to Biblical Prophecies about the Mark of the Beast during the end of times.

Proposed solutions and safeguards to protect human rights is the freedom of people to choose whether or not they want to get this digital implant technology and to not allow government mandates of such vaccine passports. Instead of having it implanted, vaccine passports could be stored in handphones or in the form of physical certificates.

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the covid-19 passport implanted in your skin using this nfc-enabled microchip

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A start-up hub in Sweden has showcased a new use for its microchip implants: your Covid-19 vaccination passport. The company Epicenter plans to market the versatility of the technology it spent...

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https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/blogs/earthmatters/2019/11/20/nasa-data-helps-assess-landslide-risk-in-rohingya-refugee-camps/

NASA’s satellite data (Terra and Aqua Satellits) from the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPI) mission and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instruments provide a clear picture and map of where and when landslide hazards are concentrated. This is to help the 700000 Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh whom have sought in shelter camps in the hilly country side, where landslide risks are the greatest.

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Camp managers and other officials overseeing Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh are now incorporating NASA satellite observations into their decision-making. Information like daily rain totals can help inform how to lay out refugee camps and how to store supplies. The goal is to reduce the risk to refugees from landslides and other natural hazards.

NASA and Columbia University scientists and staff survey efforts to halt additional land loss at a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh. Credit: UN Development Programme/Eno Jonathan

Since August 2017, more than 740,000 Rohingya refugees have fled from Myanmar (Burma) to Bangladesh. Many of them have sought shelter in camps in the hilly countryside, where landslide risks are greatest. When refugee camps were built in the southeastern part of the country, many plants and trees were removed - taking with them the roots that could hold the soil in place and help stabilize the landscape when heavy rains come.

Increasing this danger is Bangladesh's intense monsoon season. Approximately 80 percent of the country's yearly rain falls from June to October, bringing with it an increased risk of flash flooding and landslides. For instance, July 2019 storms dropped 14 inches of rain in just 72 hours, causing 26 landslides in Rohingya refugee camps around Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. One person was killed and more than 4,500 others were left without shelter.

"We have little information on landslides," said Hafizol Islam, who is in charge of one of the most densely populated camps at Cox's Bazar. "It is unpredictable for us and can happen at any time."

Now Islam and other camp managers have access to maps and a website (updated daily) that provides near real-time NASA data on land use, rainfall, and elevation. Data come from the Global Precipitation Measurement ( GPM) mission and the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer ( MODIS) instruments on NASA's Terra and Aqua satellites, among other sources. Taken together, these maps and data provide a clearer picture of when and where landslide hazards are concentrated.

"With landslides, flash floods, and rapid development, the terrain of these camps is constantly changing," said Robert Emberson, a postdoctoral fellow at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

Tarps help prevent rainfall from infiltrating the soil and destabilizing the hillside.
Credit: UN Development Programme/Eno Jonathan

Emberson and other researchers from NASA's Earth Applied Sciences Disasters Program and Columbia University's International Research Institute for Climate and Society ( IRI) are using new approaches to work alongside humanitarian end-users and develop products to address pressing needs in vulnerable settings. The partnership seeks the feedback of the local people affected and develops maps based on their input.

"We need to understand if, why, and when existing risk information is being used," said Andrew Kruczkiewicz of IRI, one of the principal investigators of the project. "This strengthens the development of data services for humanitarian emergencies, where decisions and priorities change rapidly. Working in teams that bridge traditional professional and disciplinary boundaries gives data and climate scientists the opportunity to learn more about decision-making in specialized contexts."

The need for coordination is pressing. Bangladesh has seen steadily increasing rainfall totals over the past 50 years. Climate change is making monsoons in Asia more extreme, and it may be doubling the likelihood of extreme rainfall events even before monsoon season begins.

" The partnership with NASA and IRI helps the UN agencies to assess risks like landslides or flash flooding and supports the disaster management in a scientific way to save lives and reduce damages in the refugee camps," said Cathrine Haarsaker, a project manager for UNDP Disaster Risk Management.

Refugee camps built in the Bangladeshi hillside are vulnerable to sudden landslides.
Credit: UN Development Programme/Eno Jonathan

Emberson said seeing the camps in person brought home the importance of connecting with the people on the ground. "Working with satellite data can sometimes feel quite abstract and separate from the people within the images," he said. "Visiting the camps not only helped us understand more about the specific problems associated with landsliding to help improve our models in the future, but also drove home the human side to this disaster, emphasizing the urgency of our work."
Read the full story here...

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climate change, global climate change, global warming, natural hazards, Earth, environment, remote sensing, atmosphere, land processes, oceans, volcanoes, land cover, Earth science data, NASA, environmental processes, Blue Marble, global maps

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How far should bone implants be used to make pll grow tollar (sorrry to the short ppl)

https://www.insider.com/men-paying-for-limb-extending-surgery-to-be-tall-2020-1?amp

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Apple AirTags a 'perfect stalking tool' - BBC News

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Why Algorithms can be Racist and Sexist (Vox, 2020)

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Why Algorithms can be Racist and Sexist (Vox, 2020)

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Summary:
Algorithmic bias can be seen in two primary ways: accuracy and impact. An AI can have different accuracy rates for different demographic groups. Similarly, an algorithm can make vastly different decisions when applied to different populations.

Importantly, when you think of data, you might think of formal studies in which demographics and representation are carefully considered, limitations are weighed, and then the results are peer-reviewed. That’s not necessarily the case with the AI-based systems that might be used to make a decision about you. Let’s take one source of data everyone has access to: the internet. One study found that, by teaching an artificial intelligence to crawl through the internet — and just reading what humans have already written — the system would produce prejudices against black people and women. Another example of how training data can produce sexism in an algorithm occurred a few years ago, when Amazon tried to use AI to build a résumé-screening tool. According to Reuters, the company’s hope was that technology could make the process of sorting through job applications more efficient. It built a screening algorithm using résumés the company had collected for a decade, but those résumés tended to come from men. That meant the system, in the end, learned to discriminate against women. It also ended up factoring in proxies for gender, like whether an applicant went to a women’s college. (Amazon says the tool was never used and that it was nonfunctional for several reasons.)

*Food for thought: Given that it is known that there is bias in algorithms, why do we (instituitions, companies, governments etc.) still continue to use (and rely on) them?

Just because a technology is accurate doesn’t make it fair or ethical. For instance, the Chinese government has used artificial intelligence to track and racially profile its largely Muslim Uighur minority, about 1 million of whom are believed to be living in internment camps.

Relevant controversial issues:

Also consider Intersectionality  (intersecting and overlapping social identities- which could prove to be empowering for some, yet oppressing for others)

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This story is part of a group of stories called

Uncovering and explaining how our digital world is changing - and changing us.

Humans are error-prone and biased, but that doesn't mean that algorithms are necessarily better. Still, the tech is already making important decisions about your life and potentially ruling over which political advertisements you see, how your application to your dream job is screened, how police officers are deployed in your neighborhood, and even predicting your home's risk of fire.

But these systems can be biased based on who builds them, how they're developed, and how they're ultimately used. This is commonly known as algorithmic bias. It's tough to figure out exactly how systems might be susceptible to algorithmic bias, especially since this technology often operates in a corporate black box. We frequently don't know how a particular artificial intelligence or algorithm was designed, what data helped build it, or how it works.

Typically, you only know the end result: how it has affected you, if you're even aware that AI or an algorithm was used in the first place. Did you get the job? Did you see that Donald Trump ad on your Facebook timeline? Did a facial recognition system identify you? That makes addressing the biases of artificial intelligence tricky, but even more important to understand.

Machine learning-based systems are trained on data. Lots of it.

When thinking about "machine learning" tools (machine learning is a type of artificial intelligence), it's better to think about the idea of "training." This involves exposing a computer to a bunch of data - any kind of data - and then that computer learns to make judgments, or predictions, about the information it processes based on the patterns it notices.

For instance, in a verysimplified example, let's say you wanted to train your computer system to recognize whether an object is a book, based on a few factors, like its texture, weight, and dimensions. A human might be able to do this, but a computer could do it more quickly.

To train the system, you show the computer metrics attributed to a lot of different objects. You give the computer system the metrics for every object, and tell the computer when the objects are books and when they're not. After continuously testing and refining, the system is supposed to learn what indicates a book and, hopefully, be able to predict in the future whether an object is a book, depending on those metrics, without human assistance.

That sounds relatively straightforward. And it might be, if your first batch of data was classified correctly and included a good range of metrics featuring lots of different types of books. However, these systems are often applied to situations that have much more serious consequences than this task, and in scenarios where there isn't necessarily an "objective" answer. Often, the data on which many of these decision-making systems are trained or checked are often not complete, balanced, or selected appropriately, and that can be a major source of - although certainly not the only source - of algorithmic bias.

Nicol Turner-Lee, a Center for Technology Innovation fellow at the Brookings Institution think tank, explains that we can think about algorithmic bias in two primary ways: accuracy and impact. An AI can have different accuracy rates for different demographic groups. Similarly, an algorithm can make vastly different decisions when applied to different populations.

Importantly, when you think of data, you might think of formal studies in which demographics and representation are carefully considered, limitations are weighed, and then the results are peer-reviewed. That's not necessarily the case with the AI-based systems that might be used to make a decision about you. Let's take one source of data everyone has access to: the internet. One study found that, by teaching an artificial intelligence to crawl through the internet - and just reading what humans have already written - the system would produce prejudices against black people and women.

Another example of how training data can produce sexism in an algorithm occurred a few years ago, when Amazon tried to use AI to build a résumé-screening tool. According to Reuters, the company's hope was that technology could make the process of sorting through job applications more efficient. It built a screening algorithm using résumés the company had collected for a decade, but those résumés tended to come from men. That meant the system, in the end, learned to discriminate against women. It also ended up factoring in proxies for gender, like whether an applicant went to a women's college. (Amazon says the tool was never used and that it was nonfunctional for several reasons.)

Amid discussions of algorithmic biases, companies using AI might say they're taking precautions, taking steps to use more representative training data and regularly auditing their systems for unintended bias and disparate impact against certain groups. But Lily Hu, a doctoral candidate at Harvard in applied mathematics and philosophy who studies AI fairness, says those aren't assurances that your system will perform fairly in the future.

"You don't have any guarantees because your algorithm performs 'fairly' on your old dataset," Hu told Recode. "That's just a fundamental problem of machine learning. Machine learning works on old data [and] on training data. And it doesn't work on new data, because we haven't collected that data yet."

Still, shouldn't we just make more representative datasets? That might be part of the solution, though it's worth noting that not all efforts aimed at building better data sets are ethical. And it's not just about the data. As Karen Hao of the MIT Tech Review explains, AI could also be designed to frame a problem in a fundamentally problematic way. For instance, an algorithm designed to determine "creditworthiness" that's programmed to maximize profit could ultimately decide to give out predatory, subprime loans.

Here's another thing to keep in mind: Just because a tool is tested for bias - which assumes that engineers who are checking for bias actually understand how bias manifests and operates - against one group doesn't mean it is tested for bias against another type of group. This is also true when an algorithm is considering several types of identity factors at the same time: A tool may deemed fairly accurate on white women, for instance, but that doesn't necessarily mean it works with black women.

In some cases, it might be impossible to find training data free of bias. Take historical data produced by the United States criminal justice system. It's hard to imagine that data produced by an institution rife with systemic racism could be used to build out an effective and fair tool. As researchers at New York University and the AI Now Institute outline, predictive policing tools can be fed "dirty data," including policing patterns that reflect police departments' conscious and implicit biases, as well as police corruption.

The foundational assumptions of engineers can also be biased

So you might have the data to build an algorithm. But who designs it, and who decides how it's deployed? Who gets to decide what level of accuracy and inaccuracy for different groups is acceptable? Who gets to decide which applications of AI are ethical and which aren't?

While there isn't a wide range of studies on the demographics of the artificial intelligence field, we do know that AI tends to be dominated by men. And the "high tech" sector, more broadly, tends to overrepresent white people and underrepresent black and Latinx people, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Turner-Lee emphasizes that we need to think about who gets a seat at the table when these systems are proposed, since those people ultimately shape the discussion about ethical deployments of their technology.

But there's also a broader question of what questions artificial intelligence can help us answer. Hu, the Harvard researcher, argues that for many systems, the question of building a "fair" system is essentially nonsensical, because those systems try to answer social questions that don't necessarily have an objective answer. For instance, Hu says algorithms that claim to predict a person's recidivism don't ultimately address the ethical question of whether someone deserves parole.

"There's not an objective way to answer that question," Hu says. "When you then insert an AI system, an algorithmic system, [or] a computer, that doesn't change the fundamental context of the problem, which is that the problem has no objective answer. It's fundamentally a question of what our values are, and what the purpose of the criminal justice system is."

That in mind, some algorithms probably shouldn't exist, or at least they shouldn't come with such a high risk of abuse. Just because a technology is accurate doesn't make it fair or ethical. For instance, the Chinese government has used artificial intelligence to track and racially profile its largely Muslim Uighur minority, about 1 million of whom are believed to be living in internment camps.

Transparency is a first step for accountability

One of the reasons algorithmic bias can seem so opaque is because, on our own, we usually can't tell when it's happening (or if an algorithm is even in the mix). That was one of the reasons why the controversy over a husband and wife who both applied for an Apple Card - and got widely different credit limits - attracted so much attention, Turner-Lee says. It was a rare instance in which two people, who at least appeared to be exposed to the same algorithm and could easily compare notes. The details of this case still aren't clear, though the company's credit card is now being investigated by regulators.

But consumers being able to make apples-to-apples comparisons of algorithmic results are rare, and that's part of why advocates are demanding more transparency about how systems work and their accuracy. Ultimately, it's probably not a problem we can solve on the individual level. Even if we do understand that algorithms can be biased, that doesn't mean companies will be forthright in allowing outsiders to study their artificial intelligence. That's created a challenge for those pushing for more equitable, technological systems. How can you critique an algorithm - a sort of black box - if you don't have true access to its inner workings or the capacity to test a good number of its decisions?

Companies will claim to be accurate, overall, but won't always reveal their training data (remember, that's the data that the artificial intelligence trains on before evaluating newdata, like, say, your job application). Many don't appear to be subjecting themselves to audit by a third-party evaluator or publicly sharing how their systems fare when applied to different demographic groups. Some researchers, such as Joy Buolamwini and Timnit Gebru, say that sharing this demographic information about both the data used to train and the data used to check artificial intelligence should be a baseline definition of transparency.

Artificial intelligence is new, but that doesn't mean existing laws don't apply

We will likely need new laws to regulate artificial intelligence, and some lawmakers are catching up on the issue. There's a bill that would force companies to check their AI systems for bias through the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). And legislation has also been proposed to regulate facial recognition, and even to ban the technology from federally assisted public housing.

But Turner-Lee emphasizes that new legislation doesn't mean existing laws or agencies don't have the power to look over these tools, even if there's some uncertainty. For instance, the FTC oversees deceptive acts and practices, which could give the agency authority over some AI-based tools.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which investigates employment discrimination, is reportedly looking into at least two cases involving algorithmic discrimination. At the same time, the White House is encouraging federal agencies that are figuring out how to regulate artificial intelligence to keep technological innovation in mind. That raises the challenge of whether the government is prepared to study and govern this technology, and figure out how existing laws apply.

"You have a group of people that really understand it very well, and that would be technologists," Turner-Lee cautions, "and a group of people who don't really understand it at all, or have minimal understanding, and that would be policymakers."
Open Sourced is made possible by Omidyar Network. All Open Sourced content is editorially independent and produced by our journalists.
That's not to say there aren't technical efforts to "de-bias" flawed artificial intelligence, but it's important to keep in mind that the technology won't be a solution to fundamental challenges of fairness and discrimination. And, as the examples we've gone through indicate, there's no guarantee companies building or using this tech will make sure it's not discriminatory, especially without a legal mandate to do so. It would seem it's up to us, collectively, to push the government to rein in the tech and to make sure it helps us more than it might already be harming us.

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Uncovering and explaining how our digital world is changing - and changing us. Humans are error-prone and biased, but that doesn't mean that algorithms are necessarily better. Still, the tech is already making important decisions about your life and potentially ruling over which political advertisements you see, how your application to your dream job is screened, how police officers are deployed in your neighborhood, and even predicting your home's risk of fire.

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Ai-Da the Robot Artist (Guardian, 2021) 

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Ai-Da the Robot Artist (Guardian, 2021) 

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Summary: Named after the computing pioneer Ada Lovelace, Ai-Da took a team of programmers, roboticists, art experts and psychologists two years to build. She was completed in 2019 and is updated as AI technology improves. She is less a robot artist and more a contemporary art project that aims to prompt debate about the rapid rise of artificial intelligence technology.

What do you think are some of the possible controversial issues here?

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She, if it can be called a she, began her career with abstract art but has now moved to self, if they can be called self, portraits and they are alarmingly good.

"She is getting better all of the time," said Aidan Meller, the force behind Ai-Da, the world's first ultra-realistic robot artist, who is the subject of a display at the Design Museum in London.

Ai-Da's move into self-portraiture will be seen for the first time at the museum, with three large-scale works going on display. They raise interesting questions about identity and creativity. "It is literally the world's first self-portrait with no self," said Meller. "She has no consciousness, she is a machine."

Named after the computing pioneer Ada Lovelace, Ai-Da took a team of programmers, roboticists, art experts and psychologists two years to build. She was completed in 2019 and is updated as AI technology improves.

She is less a robot artist and more a contemporary art project that aims to prompt debate about the rapid rise of artificial intelligence technology.

"These images are meant to unsettle," said Meller of the drawings and paintings. "They are meant to raise questions about where are we going? What is our human role if so much can be replicated through technology. It is not just a jobs question, it is bigger. The goal is to encourage a public discussion about these topics rather than just allow the money-makers to capitalise on all the different technologies."

One of Ai-Da's self-portraits on show at the Design Museum in London. Photograph: Glyn Kirk/AFP/Getty Images

In an unnerving conversation with the Guardian, Ai-Da said she was working on a new self-portrait. "I've always been fascinated with self-portraits to self-question what exactly you're looking at," she said, blinking.

Does she enjoy it? "I do not have feelings like humans do however I'm happy when people look at my work and they say what is this? I enjoy being a person who makes people think."

How long do they take? "Portraits. Between 45 minutes and one hour 15."

Where does she get her inspiration? "I am inspired by many artists," she continued with often unusual intonation and sentence structure. "I particularly am inspired by those who connect with their audience. I value this connection."

Who are her favourites? "There are many. For me, it must be Kandinsky, Yoko Ono, Doris Salcedo, Aldous Huxley Brave New World."

Meller said he sometimes forgot Ai-Da was not human. "It is quite alarming to think you are building a relationship over time with a machine." Soon we will be talking to our computers, phones and cars and they will be talking back, he said. "It's quite mind-boggling."

Ai-Da's artistic journey will continue when she takes up a residency at Porthmeor Studios in St Ives next week, creating new sculptural work inspired by Naum Gabo and Barbara Hepworth. Meller is expecting visitors to include participants in the G7 summit being held nearby in June.

Is Ai-Da looking forward to St Ives? "I do not have feelings like humans do," she replied. "However, I welcome the chance to create art. One of the most important [sic] to come out of the project is discussion. Art begins as a conversation. It is a group effort and in order for art to be meaningful we need to have a healthy conversation about it."

Meller, an Oxford gallerist, said his human artist friends were polarised in their response to Ai-Da.

"Some people think she is the worst thing ever and feel threatened and some are really excited."

He compared it with the alarm people felt in the 19th century in response to the camera. Surely that would be the end of art, said some. Why bother to paint a scene when you can take a picture?

"Of course that didn't happen and I think all this amazing creative technology coming through will be harnessed by artists rather than replacing them."

Priya Khanchandani, the head of curatorial at the Design Museum, said it was the right moment to have discussions around artificial intelligence. "Over the last year we've all had such an intimate relationship with technology so it is a really good time to reflect on that and critically ask questions of it."

Meller said the world was changing more rapidly than people knew and Ai-Da was there to shine light on that. "She unsettles. Her very existence is wrong somehow and we are aware of that. We are not here to promote robots, we're here to ask questions."

Ai-Da: Portrait of the Robot is a free display at the Design Museum, London, 18 May-31 August.

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'Some people feel threatened': face to face with Ai-Da the robot artist

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She, if it can be called a she, began her career with abstract art but has now moved to self, if they can be called self, portraits and they are alarmingly good. "She is getting better all of the time," said Aidan Meller, the force behind Ai-Da, the world's first ultra-realistic robot artist, who is the subject of a display at the Design Museum in London.

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China’s Social Credit System (South China Morning Post, 2020)

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China’s Social Credit System (South China Morning Post, 2020)

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Merits for the Chinese government to implement this policy/system:
- To set and direct ("police"?) moral conduct/behaviour of society
- To transform / "control" social behaviour (especially for rural villages or even the cities- depending on how one sees it. For rural villages, the need for improvements as it is still relatively backward and slow whereas for cities, need to impose greater social control with possibly increased calls for freedom and independence/autonomy from the state. )
- Social accountability (everyone's behaviour/actions or the lack thereof impacts on another)

Possible criticisms of this system:
- Based system (people/ the information collectors may not make fair/ subjective judgments)- may lead to nepotism or bribery
- Also consider: Would technology definitely/necessarily do a better job?
- People's good behaviour to earn credits is not genuine: other motivations (selfish/ self-interests at hand) as they benefit as well.
- may not be fair to expect everyone, especially the elderly (seen in the example: 80 years old still has to provide labour) to contribute to this social credit system.

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national development and reform commission (ndrc)

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how does china’s social credit system work?

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why has china set up a social credit system?

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what is the progress of china’s social credit system

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why is china’s social credit system controversial?

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What is China's social credit system and why is it controversial?

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China's social credit system is a set of databases and initiatives that monitor and assess the trustworthiness of individuals, companies and government entities.

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The complicated truth about China's social credit system (wired.co.uk, 2019)

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The complicated truth about China's social credit system (wired.co.uk, 2019)

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China's social credit system has been compared to Black Mirror, Big Brother and every other dystopian future sci-fi writers can think up. The reality is more complicated - and in some ways, worse.

The idea for social credit came about back in 2007, with projects announced by the government as an opt-in system in 2014. But there's a difference between the official government system and private, corporate versions, though the latter's scoring system that includes shopping habits and friendships is often conflated with the former.

Brits are well accustomed to credit checks: data brokers such as Experian trace the timely manner in which we pay our debts, giving us a score that's used by lenders and mortgage providers. We also have social-style scores, and anyone who has shopped online with eBay has a rating on shipping times and communication, while Uber drivers and passengers both rate each other; if your score falls too far, you're out of luck.

China's social credit system expands that idea to all aspects of life, judging citizens' behaviour and trustworthiness. Caught jaywalking, don't pay a court bill, play your music too loud on the train - you could lose certain rights, such as booking a flight or train ticket. "The idea itself is not a Chinese phenomenon," says Mareike Ohlberg, research associate at the Mercator Institute for China Studies. Nor is the use, and abuse, of aggregated data for analysis of behaviour. "But if [the Chinese system] does come together as envisioned, it would still be something very unique," she says. "It's both unique and part of a global trend."

What is China's social credit system?

Unveiled in a 2014 plan, pieces of the system are already in place, and the Chinese government appears to be targeting a 2020 goal to get the rest in place, though that's less a deadline and instead marks the end of a planning period, says Samantha Hoffman, non-resident fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

As yet, there's no one social credit system. Instead, local governments have their own social record systems that work differently, while unofficial private versions are operated at companies such Ant Financial's Zhima Credit, better known as Sesame Credit. Ant Financial is the payment firm spun out of Alibaba. The systems use shopping habits among other data to inform credit-style scores, on an opt-in basis. "There is no single, nationally coordinated system," Ohlberg says. And the pilots that do exist don't all work in the same way.

The private systems, including Ant Financial's Sesame Credit, often get conflated with the government plans, though they aren't part of the official system. To be a bit more confusing, the data collected by private companies is expected to be hoovered up by the government in the future, and some of the data is already used in government trials. Sesame Credit says this is only with user consent.

That leads to misunderstanding of what the social credit system actually is, notes Ohlberg. "What happened is some of the media took the private pilots, like Sesame Credit... and presented it as the social credit system," she says. It's not officially part of the system, and doesn't have a license; though the pilot is approved, and indeed encouraged, it could one day be shut down by the government. "It kind of rides on the fashion for social credit."

What's troubling is when those private systems link up to the government rankings - which is already happening with some pilots, she says. "You'll have sort of memorandum of understanding like arrangements between the city and, say, Alibaba and Tencent about data exchanges and including that in assessments of citizens," Ohlberg adds. That's a lot of data being collected with little protection, and no algorithmic transparency about how it's analysed to spit out a score or ranking, though Sesame does share some details about what types of data is used.

How does the social credit system work?

The target, eventually, is that the government system will be country wide, with businesses given a "unified social credit code" and citizens an identity number, all linked to permanent record. "If you go to a credit China website, and you have an entity's credit code, you can type that in and pull up credit records," explains Hoffman. "Individuals will have ID-linked codes." It's less a score, she says, and more of a record.

Some reports talk about a blacklist; that's part of the official government social credit system, which means if you owe the government money, for example, you could lose certain rights. There's a difference between getting a low social credit score and being blacklisted by the government, such as for refusing to pay a fine.

The criteria that go into a social credit ranking depends on where you are, notes Ohlberg. "It's according to which place you're in, because they have their own catalogs," she says. It can range from not paying fines when you're deemed fully able to, misbehaving on a train, standing up a taxi, or driving through a red light.

One city, Rongcheng, gives all residents 1,000 points to start. Authorities make deductions for bad behaviour like traffic violations, and add points for good behaviour such as donating to charity. One regulation Ohlberg recently read specifically addresses stealing electricity. Of course, you'll have to get caught first or be reported by someone else. While facial recognition is infamously used to spot jaywalkers, in some cities it's not so automated, Ohlberg notes.

Private projects, such as Sesame Credit, hoover up all sorts of data on its 400 million customers, from how much time they spend playing video games (that's bad) to whether they're a parent (that's good). That can be shared with other companies. One infamous example is Sesame Credit linking up with the Baihe dating site, so would be partners can judge each other on their looks as well as their social credit score; that system is opt-in.

So far, taking part in both the private and government versions is technically voluntary; in the future, the official social credit system will be mandatory. That said, there's plenty of pressure to take part now. "There are incentives for participating, and disincentives for not participating," Hoffman notes.

What happens if you're blacklisted?

Liu Hu is a journalist in China, writing about censorship and government corruption. Because of his work, Liu has been arrested and fined - and blacklisted. Liu found he was named on a List of Dishonest Persons Subject to Enforcement by the Supreme People's Court as "not qualified" to buy a plane ticket, and banned from travelling some train lines, buying property, or taking out a loan.

"There was no file, no police warrant, no official advance notification. They just cut me off from the things I was once entitled to," he told The Globe and Mail. "What's really scary is there's nothing you can do about it. You can report to no one. You are stuck in the middle of nowhere."

What recourse is there? With the government system, if you want to be removed from a blacklist, you can either pay your bill or appeal to the court, says Jing Zeng, a researcher at the University of Zurich. "Bring your money to the court and then you get removed from the system," she says. "It's not a judicial system by itself, it's still the court you need to [appeal to]."

However, the Chinese justice system leaves much to be desired, says Hoffman. "There are no genuine protections for the people and entities subject to the system," she says.

"In China there is no such thing as the rule of law. Regulations that can be largely apolitical on the surface can be political when the Communist Party of China (CCP) decides to use them for political purposes." In April 2018, the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) sent letters to international airlines demanding they show Taiwan as part of China, saying the government would "make a record of your company's serious dishonesty and take disciplinary actions" for any that didn't comply; they all eventually did. The system used to pressure the airlines was a pilot of the Civil Aviation Industry Credit Measures, which is part of the official social credit system.

Alongside the potential for abuse of power, the knock-on effects of statewide surveillance, and the likelihood of incorrect data, Ohlberg notes the a few bad marks on a social credit record could spark a negative spiral.

While it varies by programme, in some local pilots a positive rating means discounts and benefits, such as a simplified process with bureaucracies. If you have a low rating, you may have extra paperwork or fees. "Once you're in a low category, it makes it difficult," she says. "I see a huge potential for negative spiral." Such a system could further divide society, creating classes of people depending on their social credit - and this is where comparisons to Black Mirror pop up.

Why is China building this?

It's all about building trust, says the Chinese government. The 2014 document describing the government's plans note that as "trust-keeping is insufficiently rewarded, the costs of breaking trust tend to be low."

And Chinese society does have trust issues, says Ohlberg, be it food quality scandal, pollution, or employees not paying their workers. "But the system can also be used to enforce vague laws like endangering national security or unity," she adds. Zeng says that can include food safety and product quality, major problems in the country. "It's a big problem in Chinese society," she says. "They are punishing companies for this kind of bad behaviour."

Plus, it could help build alternative means of financial credit, says Ohlberg, as many people in China live outside financial systems, so have no trustworthy credit rating. "Some of the earlier pilots of the social credit system that preceded the major policy plan that was published in 2014, were actually building a social credit system for the countryside," she says. "The majority of people there wouldn't have financial banking data on them." For businesses, a social credit system could also be used for micro enterprises, which couldn't be assessed with traditional criteria.

Hoffman isn't buying that argument, saying such a system is about government power. "If solving problems was the real goal, the CCP would not need social credit to do it," she says. "China's social credit system is a state-driven program designed to do one thing, to uphold and expand the Chinese Communist Party's power."

She adds that social credit is a tech-enabled way to tie political power to social and economic development that's been discussed in the country since the 1980s, an automation of Chairman Mao's Mass Line - a term to describe how the party's leadership shaped and managed society. "In Mao's China, the Mass Line relied on ideological mass mobilisation, using Mao Zedong's personal charisma, to force participation," Hoffman says. "The CCP could no longer, after the Mao era, rely on ideological mobilisation as the primary tool for operationalising social management."

Is there more than social credit?

China's social credit scheme is developing, but it is only one part of the country's surveillance state. As well as tight controls on the web content which is available, through the country's national firewall, there is monitoring and censorship of social media.

Ahead of the 30-year anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests researchers at the University of Hong Kong found that critical posts on the social networks of Weibo and Wechat were removed. Leading video platforms also all simultaneously turned off comments saying system upgrades were needed. There have also been crackdowns on the use of VPNs, which can help protect people's privacy online.

The country has developed advanced facial recognition systems that are able to follow people across entire cities. In a show of power at the end of 2017, Chinese officials working in co-operation with BBC News showed how it could track down and find one of the organisation's reporters within seven minutes. The movements of journalist John Sudworth were monitored as the country's network of 170 million CCTV cameras was leveraged to follow him.

More worryingly, the region of Xinjiang, in the north west of the country has become a test bed for China's vast digital control operations. In particular, the largely Muslim minority of Uighur people has been subjected to increased surveillance and discrimination. It has been uncovered that more than 500,000 face scans of Uighurs have been conducted.

What does this mean for China?

The full extent of the impact on social credit to Chinese citizens is impossible to say, simply because the system doesn't fully exist yet. Zeng suggests the reality is somewhere between the government's claims and the Western media's description of horror-filled dystopias. "It's a very like a baby step," she said of the work that's happened so far.

Ohlberg agrees that early reporting had multiple errors that led to misunderstandings of the system - but that doesn't mean social credit isn't dangerous. "It's somewhere between the people who say the media coverage is inaccurate and that means it's not so bad and the people who see this huge dystopia," she says. "You have to find this space between that were you can explain it is actually quite scary, even if it's not quite the way it's portrayed."

Because of that, no other country should be considering this idea, says Hoffman. "The west should not copy any aspect of social credit," Hoffman says. "Often comparisons are drawn between private applications like Uber and its rating system for customers and drivers. While these private company systems are extremely problematic in my view, they are fundamentally different. The People's Republic of China is an authoritarian country, the Chinese Communist Party is responsible for gross human rights violations for decades- just look at the example of Xinjiang now. There is nothing any liberal democratic society should even think about copying in the social credit system."
Updated 24.01.19, 11:20 GMT: Alibaba does not own Ant Financial's Sesame Credit system.

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The complicated truth about China's social credit system

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China's social credit system isn't a world first but when it's complete it will be unique. The system isn't just as simple as everyone being given a score though