Alcohol, Worse than Most Think

As a teenager most people have had a drink or two. A study has been done that teenagers that drink at a young age are most likely setting their life up for a whole lot of bad decisions. September, 2009 the National Academy of Sciences did a study with rats and found that if rats get alcohol as a teen then they will have some of the same effects as an adult. Scientists are still unclear if these results are accurate in humans. Scientists are still unsure if teenagers that make the bad decision to drink are already on the track to make bad decisions, or if the alcohol makes the people make bad decisions for the rest of their life. 

Selective Breading and Genetic Modification

Have you ever wondered how you can get a chicken for so cheap from the supermarket? Well with selective breading scientist have been able to grow a 3 kg chicken in one third the time a natural chicken would grow to be 1 kg. Selective breeding is just what it sounds, taking characteristics from two breeds and breeding them to get a better kind of animal. There is also Genetic Modification where you can take DNA from a fish and put it in a plant in-order to make it taste better, grow larger or what ever you are wanting to achieve. Scientist have even taken DNA from a jelly fish and put it in a rabbit and made the rabbit glow. With genetic modification we can make plants grow their own pesticides. A large downfall to genetic modification is that if the pests become immune to the genetically modified plant then we will have to us even hasher pesticides. Selective breeding can create very large animals and make them cheap for the public, but a lot of the animals have health defects and can hardly move or carry their own weight. If we don't keep an eye on what is going on both of these can harm our society greatly, right now I feel that selective breeding is worse than Genetic modification because the food we are eating has so many problems that the animal can't even walk, if it were to have enough room to do so. I think that if Gregor Mendel were to see where we have taken his discoveries he would first be very amazed, then he would be ashamed that he led us to allow our food to become so unnatural.

Those Darn Mosquitoes

Don't you hate it when you get a mosquito bite or even worse an infection from that mosquito that just sucked your blood. Well what would you think if there were no more mosquitoes to worry about,wouldn't that be so nice. What about the fish that feed off the mosquito larva and the birds that eat those fish and so on. That is just one way that the mosquito effects our ecosystem. The worst thing about mosquitoes is that they carry disease, and in Silver Spring, Maryland Jittawadee Murphy is trying find a way to get rid of the mosquito infections. Some of the infections include yellow fever, west nile disease and dengue fever. I don't think that the mosquito should be extirpation because they don't bother me that much. I use bug spray and it works just fine.

The Background of HIV

In 1929 the human race was infected with HIV.

In Africa hunters would go out and look for food. They would find primates and animals that were easy to kill. The animals had the disease and when the hunter would go out and get cut on a branch, the blood from the recently killed primate and the blood transfers and infects the human race. A man named Nathan Wolf has been tracking the spread and has been trying to stop new branches of HIV. He has been working with the locals of Africa to make it so that the spread is not as bad.

I think that it is great that Nathan is doing this. Helping keep new viruses out of the human race. we will be have less chance of getting infected and dying young.

Chimpanzee Testing

Ever sense we sent the chimp to the moon we have been using chimpanzees as our so called guinea pigs. We have been testing to see how they respond to no gravity, being given hepatitis C and HIV.  In New Mexico chimps that have already gone through years of testing are being called back to the labs to get injected with new diseases and other harmful drugs. A quote by Jane Goodall said, "Most of these chimpanzees are older and  have already been subjected to years of invasive research. Would it not make more sense to leave these chimpanzees in permanent sanctuary at the Alamogordo facility." I think that she is right, animal testing is cruel and should not be allowed. Even if animal testing is required then you shouldn't test animals and then bring them back to the lab over a decade later.

Fight for your kidney

Just imagine if you were in desperate need of an organ. You would have to fight with other people that needed that organ, and if you couldn't convince people that you were deserving than you wouldn't get the organ and die. We did a simulation like this in class. We were each assigned a patient in need of an organ and we had to fight our point to try to survive. I was assigned a person who had donated their kidney to his or her father as a teenager, and now is on the verge of dying. That is all the information that I was given, and I had to argue that I was deserving of this kidney. I wrote a short letter that was my basis for my argument.

Dear Policymaker,
As a teenage my father was dying and in desperate need of a kidney. We were able to find one that matched his blood type, unfortunately the kidney was mine. Only needing one kidney to survive I was more than willing to give up a kidney to save the one I loved. Now I have been diagnosed with kidney disease. I am needing a kidney to survive. Please allow me the kidney so I can live out the rest of my life.

I didn't receive the kidney because the person that decided who lived or who died said that we didn't have control over that and chose straws out of a hat. He didn't draw my name.

Welcome to my blog!

I am from Durango, I am going to a new high school called Animas High School. I enjoy mountain biking and skiing. This blog is going to be about what I am doing in my biology class.