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Thursday, October 30, 2003
CHARLES ONYANGO-OBBO / WHAT OTHERS SAY
Now you can live for 500 years!
First, it was announced that there have been very successful trials of dried blood. It is in powder form and made from red blood cells.
The truly revolutionary thing about this is that, unlike donated human blood, which normally has a shelf life of 42 days, dried one can be stored for many years. The synthetic blood has also been shown to transport oxygen better through the body than the real thing.
The process of developing it has been kept secret by the California company that made the breakthrough, but one imagines it is basically like juice powder. You pour in some liquid, shake and administer.
There is some hot bit of information about this one. The company says it can make the powder blood from any mammal's red blood cells, but that it has not done so for ethical reasons.
It opens up the possibility that a farmer will be saved by blood from his cow, then some years down the road, he could slaughter and eat it, thus feeding on what Africans would say is his "own blood".
Staying in the same neighbourhood, University of California scientists manipulated the genes of the nematode worm and tweaked its hormones, extending its life span to 140 days.
The nematode�s life span is 20 days. Extending its life six-fold was equivalent to extending the human life span by 500 years. The study involved suppression of a growth factor also found in mammals. So, in theory, our lives can soon easily be extended for 500 years.
The big problem, reports the Journal of Nature, is that these results were achieved by removing the nematode's reproductive system. The Times says it thinks humans are unlikely to opt for such a long life if it means sacrificing their reproductive organs. I suspect they are right on that one.
Everyone who follows the news heard the one about the sophisticated performance-enhancing drug tetrahydrogestrione (THG) that for long went undetected and that many of the world�s top athletes have used to break records. The drug, we were told, is taken by injection under the tongue (ouch!).
However, tucked inside the pages of The Times was a short interview of Don Catlin, the molecular pharmacologist who cracked the code that enabled THG's detection. He lists quite shocking, and indeed, contradictory side-effects:
"It will make you bigger and stronger. It will also make hair grow on your face if you are a woman and make you balder if you are a man. A man�s testicles will shrink and his breasts will grow, while a woman�s breasts will get smaller."
The world, however, is infinite in its variety, and so while some things were getting smaller, others were growing bigger.
Remember the time the bubble burst on the dot.com companies? Most of them went, and among the few left standing was Google, the global search engine.
Today Google handles as many as 75 per cent of global Internet research requests � about 200 million a day. Truly remarkable if you consider that Google was founded only five years ago.
The Financial Times reports that Google will have a share flotation, possibly next March. Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, both 30, will each take home $1.5b (Sh102 billion) each. They are already among the richest people under 40 years in the world, with a fortune of at least �531m each. Sometimes going to school and perseverance can be hugely rewarding.
Let�s return to Mother Africa. In 2000, Zimbabwe�s President Robert Mugabe rolled out his government�s controversial campaign to seize land from white farmers, and hand it to the masses, mostly families of veterans who fought the liberation war against the white racist regime. The verdict on the evictions is in now.
The country, once the world�s largest exporter of tobacco, has seen its exports fall this year to 80,000 tonnes from 237,000 in 2000. Wheat output has plummeted from 283,000 tonnes in 2000 to 60,000 this year. The commercial cattle herd has fallen dramatically from 1.2m to a paltry 150,000.
Now Dr Mugabe�s government has turned on the veterans whom it used to drive out the white farmers, and who had settled on the repossessed farms. Thousands of "ruling party peasants" are being thrown off the farms by party hacks.
Tichaona Jokonya, former ambassador to the United Nations and now head of the tourism authority, has kicked out over 70 resettled families to make way for a fabulous palace, complete with a squash court.
On another former white-owned farm, the "new owners" and their families, over 5,000 people in all, were ejected and the land doled out to the Mugabe clan. His elder sister, Sabina, who has two other farms, got a huge chunk of it. Two of her sons and Winnie Mugabe, a widow of one of the President�s nephews, divided out the rest among themselves.
On a less severe note, we learn from The Independent that The Washington Post has been accused of censorship by friends and foe alike. It recently decided to drop a cartoon that poked fun at the love life � or none � of President George Bush�s National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.
Rice, 49, is a tough operator, single and known for working long hours. The Bondoocks cartoon had one of its characters suggesting that the world would be a better place if he and his friends could help Rice find a boyfriend.
"Maybe if there was a man in the world Condoleezza truly loved, she wouldn�t be so hell bent to destroy the planet," he says.
Depending on how you read this, it might explain why Europeans and Americans are the givers in the aid business, why we, Africans, are the beggars. It partly has to do with our hatred for pets.
In the last few days, the Western press has been awash with findings that suggest that pets like cats are good for the children�s health and heart. By caring for pets, children learn to have empathy and look after fellow creatures when they are adults.
I guess if you don�t do that, you only learn how to be looked after.
Email: i [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Mr Onyango-Obbo is Nation Media Group�s managing editor for media convergence and syndication.
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