New cure for cell phone carcinoma?
Sydney, Australia, 29 April 2050: Australian researchers at the University of New South Wales claim to have identified a potential cure for the most widespread form of cancer, commonly dubbed Cell Phone Carcinoma.
Cell phone carcinoma is the leading cause of death in 70-90 year olds, who were exposed to dangerous radiation from early mobile telephone handsets before the link between these handsets and brain tumour development was proven.
The new technique involves the implantation on the skull of a subdermal patch containing anti-cancer agent interleukin IIIc, which provides a constant supply of interleukin to the site of cell phone carcinoma, in the temporal lobes.
"This is the first time interleukin has been delivered via a continuous flow subdermal deposit," said Doctor Ellen Chan, of the University of NSW Oncology Research Division.
"Our early results are so promising we stopped the study as it would have been unethical not to offer the therapy to all participants."
The five year study was only in its third year. Subdermal interleukin was given to half of the 400 participants, while a placebo patch was given to the other half. All participants were in the 75-80 year old age group, and assessed to be at high risk of developing cell phone carcinoma.
"In the interleukin group only one patient developed cell phone carcinoma in the first three years, but in the control group using placebo, 15 patients have now developed the disease," Dr Chan said.
Third major breakthrough from government facility
If proven in further clinical trials, this will be the third major breakthrough in ten years to come out of the Australian Government's National Health and Medical Research Program (NHMRP).
Two others included the development in 2035 of a vaccine against diabetes, and the cholesterol neutralising agent Profactum, released in 2043. The program has produced numerous other minor improvements to existing therapies, most notably in the area of HIV and AIDS.
The NHMRP was the Australian Government's response to the decision by big pharma to cease all clinical research in Australia, following mandatory price reductions on prescription medicines in Australia.
The Government diverted a large part of its defence and foreign aid budgets to medical research, focused on specific health priorities which would benefit both Australia and the developing world.
"We will approach medical research like the Chinese approached the Mission to Mars," said the then Australian Health Minister, Troy Barnaby. "With single minded determination and a bloody minded will to win."
Diabetes was the first priority identified, and all research resources nationally were devoted to identifying the most promising drug candidates, and attracting the leading researchers to Australia. When a diabetes vaccine was developed to halt the body's own destruction of pancreatic cells, the research was made available free of charge to other governments under a philosophy borrowed from technology, 'open source science'.
"When insulin for diabetes was discovered by Banting and Best in Canada they didn't patent it and sell it only to the wealthy of North America. They invited European and American researchers to work with them to spread their discovery to the four corners of the world and we want to return to that model," said the international coordinator of the diabetes vaccine program in 2035, Dr Ji Nan Hsu.
The open source science model has now been adopted by all major developed nations, with China the most successful in developing breakthrough medical discoveries to date, most recently including targeted gene therapies to halt the onset and progresson of multiple sclerosis and alzheimers disease. The first and most famous breakthrough to emerge from China's focused research program was in vitro spinal cord regeneration allowing the reversal of para and quadriplegia.
Drug companies which have tried to patent and market variations of open source therapies under their own labels have been blocked in court or locked out of hospitals throughout the world.
Saturday
Wednesday
'Father of Modern China' on display in Madison Square Gardens
But is it really him?
New York, 26 April 2050: The plasticised body of former Chinese Premier Jian Meng drew 120,000 people to its first day of public display here today.
Tens of thousands of mostly Chinese Americans waited in pouring rain all week to be among the first to view Meng's body outside China. Viewings will take place in New York, Chicago and San Francisco, before the body returns to its mausoleum in Taipei.
Meng, who died in 2048, is credited as the architect of the 'Chinese Miracle'. He led the transformation of China to a socialist free market economy, and achieved the peaceful re-integration of the island state of Taiwan in 2027.
But it was as a young firebrand, newly elected Premier that he devised the key policy which historians agree led to China's rise to be the pre-eminent global superpower - the 'Ten Years to Freedom' campaign. This was the decision in 2015 to phase out the use of fossil fuels by motor vehicles and industry within a decade.
Meng took the dramatic step in 2020, just five years into the campaign, of banning the sale of fossil fuels for private motor vehicles.
Meng claimed in his Little Green Book that, 'the 2015 attack by perfidious (sic) USA against Iran, and the subsequent impact on our economy from instability in oil supplies made it clear to me that China must either shuck the yoke of oil tyranny, or join the horde of morally corrupt nation states fighting like alley cats over the spilled milk of the Arab sheiks.'
China's reduced dependence on fossil fuels, and advanced alternative energy economy, enabled it to ride out the shockwaves of the 2028 Oil War with minimal economic impact compared to the fossil fuel dependent economies of the USA and EU.
Questions about authenticity
Meng is revered in China, and throughout the Chinese diaspora. It is the first time his body has been moved outside of China due to the grave risk of damage during air or sea transportation.
Meng's body was transported to New York by a Chinese PLA Suborbital, after Lloyds of Hong Kong agreed to underwrite the venture for an undisclosed sum.
The decision by the Chinese government to suddenly relent and allow Meng's body to leave China has however sparked rumours that the body is in fact not Meng, but simply a simulcra in lifelike plastic - or even a clone.
"How would you ever know?" asked one woman after her ten minute viewing was finished. She had queued for three days to see Meng. "It looks like him, so real he looks like he is just sleeping, but he is sealed in polycarbon so it makes him look like a plastic doll," she said.
Another man, who claimed to have met Meng at a Washington DC Embassy reception in 2028, said he was in no doubt. "It is him. Exactly as I remember him, just older. No doubt about it."
Plasticisation of the dead was pioneered by a German shock artist at the turn of the century, and is now in use for the mummification of persons of cultural significance by several cultures including China, Ukrainian Russia and India.
The first and oldest plastified mummy is that of former Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, whose body was removed from public display in 2029 following the Second Orange Revolution, which saw Western Russia vote to merge with Ukraine, and the subsequent destruction of many former Russian cultural icons.
But is it really him?
New York, 26 April 2050: The plasticised body of former Chinese Premier Jian Meng drew 120,000 people to its first day of public display here today.
Tens of thousands of mostly Chinese Americans waited in pouring rain all week to be among the first to view Meng's body outside China. Viewings will take place in New York, Chicago and San Francisco, before the body returns to its mausoleum in Taipei.
Meng, who died in 2048, is credited as the architect of the 'Chinese Miracle'. He led the transformation of China to a socialist free market economy, and achieved the peaceful re-integration of the island state of Taiwan in 2027.
But it was as a young firebrand, newly elected Premier that he devised the key policy which historians agree led to China's rise to be the pre-eminent global superpower - the 'Ten Years to Freedom' campaign. This was the decision in 2015 to phase out the use of fossil fuels by motor vehicles and industry within a decade.
Meng took the dramatic step in 2020, just five years into the campaign, of banning the sale of fossil fuels for private motor vehicles.
Meng claimed in his Little Green Book that, 'the 2015 attack by perfidious (sic) USA against Iran, and the subsequent impact on our economy from instability in oil supplies made it clear to me that China must either shuck the yoke of oil tyranny, or join the horde of morally corrupt nation states fighting like alley cats over the spilled milk of the Arab sheiks.'
China's reduced dependence on fossil fuels, and advanced alternative energy economy, enabled it to ride out the shockwaves of the 2028 Oil War with minimal economic impact compared to the fossil fuel dependent economies of the USA and EU.
Questions about authenticity
Meng is revered in China, and throughout the Chinese diaspora. It is the first time his body has been moved outside of China due to the grave risk of damage during air or sea transportation.
Meng's body was transported to New York by a Chinese PLA Suborbital, after Lloyds of Hong Kong agreed to underwrite the venture for an undisclosed sum.
The decision by the Chinese government to suddenly relent and allow Meng's body to leave China has however sparked rumours that the body is in fact not Meng, but simply a simulcra in lifelike plastic - or even a clone.
"How would you ever know?" asked one woman after her ten minute viewing was finished. She had queued for three days to see Meng. "It looks like him, so real he looks like he is just sleeping, but he is sealed in polycarbon so it makes him look like a plastic doll," she said.
Another man, who claimed to have met Meng at a Washington DC Embassy reception in 2028, said he was in no doubt. "It is him. Exactly as I remember him, just older. No doubt about it."
Plasticisation of the dead was pioneered by a German shock artist at the turn of the century, and is now in use for the mummification of persons of cultural significance by several cultures including China, Ukrainian Russia and India.
The first and oldest plastified mummy is that of former Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, whose body was removed from public display in 2029 following the Second Orange Revolution, which saw Western Russia vote to merge with Ukraine, and the subsequent destruction of many former Russian cultural icons.
Secret hidden in the sands will at last be probed
Aratta, former Iran, 5 April 2050: Archeologists returned for the first time today to the site of the ancient city unearthed in a nuclear blast during the Oil War.
The city has been extensively surveyed by satellite and high altitude sideband radar, but until now the hotzone has been considered too dangerous for even temporary human habitation.
The ruins appeared in the moon like crater caused by a nuclear blast and windstorm near the former South Eastern Iranian city of Jiroft. Buildings obvious from the aerial survey include several apparent dwellings and a huge temple on a low hill, with a large plaza located at the juncture of two rivers.
Most importantly, infrared imaging appears to indicate an enormous boat shaped object within the temple building. The quest to conclusively locate Aratta has intensified since the 2020 discovery in Azerbaijan of bronze engravings of the Sumarian Enmerkar legends, which appear to indicate that 'the mount between rivers at the town of Aratta' was the resting site of the fabled Ark of Noah - not modern day Mt Ararat as some believed.
"If it is indeed shown to be Aratta, the city of Sumerian legend, it may date back as far as 2,500 BC and hold the key to the myth of the flood," said U Shanghai spokesperson, Mr Jack Chang.
Experts at Calcutta University have called the expedition 'foolhardy, and doomed.'
"Aratta has been conclusively proven to exist at the site of Phraapsa, near the river Araxes," according to Calcutta U Professor of New Archeology, Sriranjan Chaudry. "And there was no Mount, no Noah's Ark."
"Our colleagues are putting at risk their reputations, and their lives, for what could show itself to be nothing more than a Parthian trading town," he said.
Due to prevailing electromagnetic anomalies in the region, there will be no communication possible with members of the University of Shanghai expedition until their return and deradiation on Friday.
Aratta, former Iran, 5 April 2050: Archeologists returned for the first time today to the site of the ancient city unearthed in a nuclear blast during the Oil War.
The city has been extensively surveyed by satellite and high altitude sideband radar, but until now the hotzone has been considered too dangerous for even temporary human habitation.
The ruins appeared in the moon like crater caused by a nuclear blast and windstorm near the former South Eastern Iranian city of Jiroft. Buildings obvious from the aerial survey include several apparent dwellings and a huge temple on a low hill, with a large plaza located at the juncture of two rivers.
Most importantly, infrared imaging appears to indicate an enormous boat shaped object within the temple building. The quest to conclusively locate Aratta has intensified since the 2020 discovery in Azerbaijan of bronze engravings of the Sumarian Enmerkar legends, which appear to indicate that 'the mount between rivers at the town of Aratta' was the resting site of the fabled Ark of Noah - not modern day Mt Ararat as some believed.
"If it is indeed shown to be Aratta, the city of Sumerian legend, it may date back as far as 2,500 BC and hold the key to the myth of the flood," said U Shanghai spokesperson, Mr Jack Chang.
Experts at Calcutta University have called the expedition 'foolhardy, and doomed.'
"Aratta has been conclusively proven to exist at the site of Phraapsa, near the river Araxes," according to Calcutta U Professor of New Archeology, Sriranjan Chaudry. "And there was no Mount, no Noah's Ark."
"Our colleagues are putting at risk their reputations, and their lives, for what could show itself to be nothing more than a Parthian trading town," he said.
Due to prevailing electromagnetic anomalies in the region, there will be no communication possible with members of the University of Shanghai expedition until their return and deradiation on Friday.
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