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Wanted: Healthy Food For Indigenous Communities
Food supplementation programs for women, infants and children are among the strategies that should be trialled to improve nutrition in Indigenous communities, according to an editorial published in the May 18 Indigenous Health issue of the Medical Journal of Australia.
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National Public Health Organizations Brief Capitol Hill On H1N1
The recent H1N1 flu outbreak served as a genuine test of our national public health system"s ability to respond to an emerging public health threat and experts are cautioning that a more severe outbreak could occur in the fall of 2009. Leaders from some of the nation"s foremost public health and medical associations will conduct a briefing for staff members from House and Senate offices on Thursday, May 21, 2009. Speakers will focus on the status of the current public health workforce and efforts needed to sustain workforce capacity to respond to emerging infectious diseases.
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State Of The Air Report
The American Lung Association released its State of the Air: 2009 Report this month. The 10th annual report states that air pollution has significantly improved in some areas of the country, but major cities still have significant problems with pollutants.
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Does Synthetic Biology Need Synthesized Ethics?

The emerging field of synthetic biology draws on a variety of technologies, including genetic engineering and nanotechnology, to engineer biological systems to perform novel tasks. As the science and its applications develop, instead of creating a "new kind" of ethics for each new techno-scientific arena, a comprehensive approach is needed to address ethical and social issues of emerging technologies as a whole, according to a report by Erik Parens, Josephine Johnston, and Jacob Moses of The Hastings Center. Synthetic biology promises significant advances in areas such as biofuels, specialty chemicals, agriculture, and medicine but also poses potential risks. Commissioned by the Synthetic Biology Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Ethical Issues in Synthetic Biology: An Overview of the Debates analyzes how the ethical issues raised by a variety of emerging technologies are often similar and familiar. The authors find that these similarities are abundant enough to justify developing an ethical framework that cuts across emerging and converging technologies. "Rather than stove-piping ethical questions into the hyphenated areas of bio-ethics, nano-ethics, neuro-ethics, and so on, it is time to begin developing an ethics of emerging technologies as a whole," said Erik Parens in a discussion of the report"s findings at the Woodrow Wilson Center on June 24. Access the free report here. Gregory Kaebnick, also of The Hastings Center, described the Center"s new, multi-year project examining the ethical issues raised in the report in greater depth. That project is also funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. "Given the rate at which new technologies are emerging a comprehensive ethical approach should be developed to more readily identify and address ethical challenges and foster a productive public dialogue about social implications," said David Rejeski, director of the Synthetic Biology Project. "Synthetic biology provides both a test case and an opportunity to get in front of these issues." The Hastings Center


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