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Page: Profile: Wren's Nest News Local
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Article: 8243
[Health]
Date Posted:
10/19/2003
5:07:23 am EDT
Wvox Stats
Views: 7,384
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Comments: 10
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Biologists Assess `Sixth Extinction'
Author: Oakland Ross Source: The Toronto Star
Title: BIOLOGISTS ASSESS `SIXTH EXTINCTION'
What do nausea, headaches, childhood leukemia, ovarian cancer and a witch's brew of other human maladies have in common?
They are all distinctly unpleasant — in some cases, even fatal — and they can all be treated to some degree with plants or with compounds produced from plants.
In fact, experts estimate that between 30 and 40 per cent of all commonly used medicines in North America are derived or synthesized from green things that emerge from the ground.
That's the good news.
The bad news is that the world's nearly countless plants — and the medicines they contain — are disappearing even more quickly than they can be located and studied. In most cases, we'll never even know that they existed or what lethal human diseases they might have cured.
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Community Thoughts: There are 10 comments posted | Reverse Sort |
| Re: "30 Million Years From Now" | Oct 19th. at 8:08:12 pm EDT |
by A. Bork (nasionnaich) (Stanchfield, MN, USA) - wc_xemail
The little scenario by OceanicGold reminds me of a painting I once saw in a friend's home.
It was of the Earth - at least, a view of one portion of it, covered in a seething mass of Humanity. Many people were even being forced out to sea by the crushing masses surrounding them.
I did not see any representations of any people other than Caucasians.
----nasionnaich
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| Biodiversity And The Government Cronies | Oct 19th. at 7:59:26 pm EDT |
by A.Bork (nasionnaich) (Stanchfield, MN, USA) - wc_xemail
Hey, why should the government even care about whether or not some little plant survives? The government functionaries - such as the Shrub ("President" Bush) - don't rely on such palnt-based medicinal cures and remedies. They don't have, after all, so it won't affect them if some obscure little plant in the Bolivian rain-forest is wiped out.
Of course, they could very well be wrong about that, too......
----nasionnaich
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| No Title | Oct 19th. at 4:04:30 pm EDT |
by Northwest Solstice (Salem, AL) - wc_xemail - Web
I remember reading an article in National Geographic once about plants being used as medicine. The author was with a herbalist. They were driving past a field when the author asked the herbilist if he saw any plants in the field that could be used as medicine. He looked, and said, yes, he did. They stopped the car and got out and starting walking to whatever plant the man saw. Then the herbalist stopped and pointed to another plant and said, "This is useful, too. And so is this one." Half an hour later, the herbalist had pointed out some 50 different plants that were beneficial to humans and described their uses and how to harvest them and the writer and the herbalist STILL had not reached the original plant the herbalist first saw. I imagine just about every plant in this world is good for something- if nothing else it provide oxygen for us.
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| On Our Way Out | Oct 19th. at 4:04:14 pm EDT |
by Raven-rouched (In the light of a dying sun) - wc_xemail
There will be one more generation of homo sapiens after the one coming into the world in the next year.
Then it's goodnight, humanity.
Ah well. It's been nice knowing some of you. But given the way we've screwed this up, I'm fairly certain we shan't continue, but shall instead be ground up for spare parts by the Universe.
This is probably what happens anyway, despite nice fairy tales about heaven, the summerlands, etc. But if there is any conscious governing effort out there, we're most likely to be on the receiving end of its more unpleasant attributes.
Sleep tight!
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| What Is Killing The Planet? | Oct 19th. at 4:00:09 pm EDT |
by Barbara (Ohio) - wc_xemail
Nothing is killing the planet.
Nothing, short of a supernova will kill our planet Earth. Gaia is a hard organism to keep down.
Nothing will stop life.
What is being killed is the current batch of life. But even if humanity nukes our ecosystems to dust, even if we kill off every third species and do in ourselves, life will once more arise. Nuclear winter will end, and life, the ever-adaptable, will return.
It won't be us. It will be different, but it will be there, and Gaia will greet the new diversity with joy.
As for us....well, we may or may not survive. We've made it this far, so I figure we will straggle on, even if we do decimate most of our population. But maybe not. And in the grand scheme of things, maybe that isn't such a bad idea. We are rather a messy species, rather like a plague at times. I mean, from an evolutionary view of things, we are.
But know this....when we say, "Save the Earth!" what we are truly saying is, "Save Ourselves."
Because she will go on just fine without us. She has a longer lifespan than we can imagine, and has been through all sorts of hellish stuff. We, on the other hand are fragile, and if we foul our own nests....well, we have nowhere else to fly, do we?
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| Sooner That We Think | Oct 19th. at 2:01:15 pm EDT |
by Amy Foxe (Hull, England) - wc_xemail
There have been many mass extinctions throughout known history and homo sapiens have caused the greatest majority.
We already have illnesses with no known cures and yet we continue to meddle creating more deadlier strains all in the pursuit of "what if?".
SARS a prime example of what happens when a biological culture escapes the confines of the laboratory.
BSE or the cattle plague, not currently detectable in our native deer population, so what do we do? We force a cross-contamination to see what would happen.
Stupid, stupid, stupid!!!
How long before we become the next lost civilisation?
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| Oh Those Stupid Humans | Oct 19th. at 12:19:42 pm EDT |
by blackwolf (Alberta, Canada) - wc_xemail
What is killing this planet! Power, greed and the stupid thought that we humans are superior to Mother earth. We will pay the price for that.
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| It'll Change | Oct 19th. at 11:37:26 am EDT |
by Paul (Michigan) - wc_xemail
In less than 100 years we will be running out oil anyways so when that happens the human race is going to fall right on it's face unless we start doing something different. When that does happen and if we do survive, thing definitely will be different.
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| 30 Million Years From Now | Oct 19th. at 10:57:06 am EDT |
by OceanicGold (Keansburg, NJ, USA) - wc_xemail
The professor was nervous as he waited for the camera to start recording. This was his first documentary. He had his segmented exoskeleton polished carefully and sequins adorned it. His mandables twitched nervously. He took a deep breath through the ten holes on the side of his body.
Five, four, three, two, one. Action, the cameraman klicked out the countdown with a shrill sound.
"here we see the layer of the "sixth extinction" which brought about the end of the reign of the mammals. In less then two hundred years the soil became permeated with a "soot" of sorts that we have found in the same layer even in the mud of sea beds."
"when it was analyzed we found an abundance of metals, elements, dioxin, hinting that the air was at one time a toxic soup."
"Some think that like the other layers, it may have been some kind of meteor strike. However the layer over this hundred plus years increases in contaminants steadily and then drops off at the end of the of the extinction, we assume that their may have instead been some kind of steady increase in volcanism."
"The savages on Mars we have encountered claim that they destroyed the world even as they were making life possible where they live now. They said that the Earth Goddess Gaia was defiled and could no longer support their life, and they were exiled to a cold dark planet. Some biologists on the fringe beleive the claim soley based on the beleif that these martians share some DNA in common with the rats we feed upon. It is my personal opinion that our research is only feeding in to superstition. As far as we know we Roachkind are the first and only truly sentient being on the planet."
The professor is done, the thrill over and the excitement left him burned out. He hopped into the car only to find himself in a traffic jam resulting from a blockade made by other Roaches calling themselves Environmentalists. He thought, Idiots, that is not real science and he gazed at the beauty of factories and apartment flats now like dark stencils against an immense and colorful sunset and chirped approval.
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| Sigh . .. . | Oct 19th. at 7:37:47 am EDT |
by KarEEna (Perth, Australia) - wc_xemail
So, what else is new? We keep getting told about stuff like this yet nothing ever changes really. One of these days we're going to be stuck on this planet with no food, no drinkable water and an unbreathable atmosphere and we're going to wonder why it wasn't prevented.
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