Mexico is home to a Chinese delicacy dubbed the “cocaine of the sea”. The swim bladder of the Totoaba fish is a traditional Chinese medicine believed to heal many ailments from pregnancy pains to joint issues. It also is purportedly a beautifying supplement and gives you x-ray vision. A swim bladder from this poor Totoaba fish can fetch $20,000 retail from a shop in Guangzhou, China. Sea Shepard are now patrolling the waters off the Coast of Mexico, deploying drones and satellite surveillance tech in order to combat this marine threat. The same traffic routes are being used by these bladder pirates and the existing drug cartels, subsequently raising the firepower available to these rogue fisherman.
Europe is considering giving advanced robots human rights, or robot rights. Experts have warned Europe this is a terrible idea. The European Parliament passed a resolution in 2017 detailing a legal status of “electronic persons”. An open letter written by experts in AI, Law, Medical Science and Robotics said you watch too much TV science fiction has warped your perception of robots, a legal status would be inappropriate. We essentially create robots to serve us, giving them rights would stop the robot slave trade. And that would be bad?
An analyst from Goldman Sachs has questioned the profitability of Gene Therapy. Curing a patient is quite frankly bad for business. The question asked was “Is curing patients a sustainable business model?… "The potential to deliver 'one shot cures' is one of the most attractive aspects of gene therapy, genetically-engineered cell therapy and gene editing. However, such treatments offer a very different outlook with regard to recurring revenue versus chronic therapies”. Profits for Hepatitis C treatments have been falling since 2015 from $12.5bn to $4bn today. This is because 90% of Hep C can now be cured. Profits remain high where incident pools remain stable like cancer.
The images of wild animals are displayed on billboards, clothing, food products and much more. This gives the average person the perception of a large populous of these particular animals. The evidence is quite the reverse. These animals are decreasing in number and some nearing complete extinction. Should we limit the display of endangered species to better represent the likelihood of seeing these beauties in the wild? Don’t forget, we see these animals displayed everywhere, perhaps for products that even endanger their habitats.
We may know more about our neighbouring planets than our own deep-sea, we speculate on the value of precious metals on board nearby comets. However now people are looking down to the deep-sea mud to extract rare metals like yttrium off the coast of Japan. Can our oceans sustain any more catastrophic mining events? The deeper levels of our oceans are home to more biodiversity than previously suspected. We hope the mining process deployed by these new underwater ventures can be clean, quiet and respectful.
The Amazon Rainforest in Colombia has now been protected. Well, at least 8 million hectares. The indigenous communities living on their ancestral lands will now live on unimpeded by profit chasing machinery. Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos announced this buffer zone since farmers have been slowly developing their crops and moving their cattle herds deeper and deeper into the rainforest. This recent 8 million hectares joins a previous patchwork of 40 million hectares in the noble pursuit of maintaining the forest and securing the carbon stored inside these giant trees.
Trinidad and Tobago will decriminalize homosexuality. The Caribbean nation still lives with a colonial-era judicial system now deemed unconstitutional. Justice Devindra Rampersad wrote Trinidad and Tobago is set to decriminalize homosexuality... the court declares that sections 13 and 16 of the [Sexual Offenses Act] are unconstitutional, illegal, null, void, invalid and of no effect to the extent that these laws criminalise any acts constituting consensual sexual conduct between adults.” Currently “buggery” (anal sex) can put you in prison for 25 years.
Telegram is an encryption app supporting anonymous messaging and file sharing. Russia have publicly taken Telegram to court in order to reveal it’s encryption techniques and back door keys. The suspicion is Russia are not in favour of dissenting journalists having a safe haven to discuss national scepticism. Another growing spotlight is on the increasing amount of pirated material available. From Hollywood films to TV shows and music, accounts are publicly making illegal material available to any user anonymously. With the opponents of Telegram multiplying this app is definitely worth watching, what will the next court case identify as being acceptable in software development.