Iranian city 'inhabitable' claim Shanghai scientists
by ZI staff reporters
Shanghai, April 15 2050: Scientists who have finished analysing the findings of their controversial expedition into the middle of the Iranian hot zone have shocked the world by announcing not only that they have discovered the ancient city of Aratta containing a perfectly preserved Noah's Ark style wooden boat - but also that parts of the underground city are 'suitable for recolonisation'.
(See the first ZI story on the expedition here: http://news2050.blogspot.com/2006/04/secret-hidden-in-sands-will-at-last-be.html )
Rumours had emerged from the University that the Ark-like boat had been found, but Chinese authorities locked down the news flow when several members of the exploring party became sick, and two were rumoured to have died from radiation poisoning.
Far from being a small "Parthian trading town", the archeologists statement claimed that:
* The city unearthed in a nuclear blast was Aratta, an ancient Sumerian capital, which appears to have been built on the banks of an ancient river, possibly the former course of the modern day Halil river.
* The ruins show evidence of a catastrophic flood destroying most of the city around 2200 BC, which puts it in the range of dates scholars estimate as likely for the flood described in the Old Testament.
* The city was rebuilt post flood, with the most modern artifacts found dating to the year 1100 BC when scholars have postulated the city-state established its capital in modern day Iran and Aratta declined and was abandoned.
* The city temple, clearly visible in Yahoogle Earth images of the site, contained a partially intact boat of immense proportions: 1.5m cubic feet, or the capacity of 570 maglev freight cars. These dimensions approximate those of the biblical Ark.
* Most of the stone and marble buildings of the city are still intact under the sands, and connected by an intricate system of tunnels, many collapsed but some still open, which may have been built as part of city defenses. An underground aquifer estimated to hold about 5m gigalitres of water was at about 30% capacity.
* Radiation levels in these underground buildings were 'not inimical to human life'
The terse and factual statements above were released without further comment by the University of Shanghai Archeology department, and a publication on their findings is awaiting peer review.
However the statements have created furor among the Iranian diaspora, with leaders of the New York Iranian Cultural Preservation Society among the most vocal.
"Aratta was the birthplace of Persian civilisation, we must return to Aratta, and make it once more the birthplace for a new Iran," ICPS Executive Mirza Abdolvahhab said to the NY and Times of India Post. "We are already raising funds to establish a new capital in Aratta for the whole diaspora."
"Any attempt to recolonise this irradiated wasteland would just lead to a senseless loss of life - it will be 500 years before people will walk the soil of Iran again," said Doctor Mostafa Mohammad Najjar, Health Minister for the Iranian Diaspora Government in Geneva.
"We cannot stop people determined to die, from going to their deaths," he said, "But if they take their wives and children with them, may Allah have mercy on their souls."
Wednesday
Longevity therapy the road to oblivion?
by Salim ali Salim, Jakarta
March 30 2050
"If longevity therapy had been available two hundred years ago, Charles Darwin might have called it the 'Doomsday Drug' "
This is the stark warning to emerge from one of the speakers at the WHO CCR5 Gene Therapy global crisis meeting in Jakarta this week.
The conference was urgently called by the WHO to discuss the implications of CCR5 based therapies going off patent in 2055 and becoming both cheap, and widely available throughout the world.
Unless you are Rumplestiltskin, you would know the CCR5 was the wonder treatment launched in 2019 in Europe, as a cure for HIV, but it had the side effect of making CCR5 treated patients highly resistant to a range of other mortal conditions such as skin and breast cancer, pneumonia, influenza and various other contagious diseases. People treated with CCR5 were soon shown to have an average life expectancy 20 years longer than the normal population, with one documented case of a CCR5 treated man living to the age of 153.
Until now though, the incredibly expensive therapy has been limited by most governments to either people who can prove they have either HIV or relevant cancers, or to the very rich who fly to clinics in South Korea, Thailand, or Brazil for a course of CCR5.
The therapy is not without side effects. It does not slow the aging process and has no beneficial effect on brain function, so although CCR5 treated patients are not beset by chronic diseases, they can still become demented or be effected by Alzheimers disease, and have to live with it for decades.
Similarly, they can be effected by strokes and brain haemmorages, and face decades in a vegetative state, or handicapped. The cost to society is already huge and has forced several nations, led by the richer Scandinavian states, to enact laws allowing euthenasia of CCR5 patients who have been diagnosed with dementia or final stage Alzheimers disease.
"If copy-drug makers are able to start mass producing CCR5 therapy, and it gets down to a price where the average middle class person can afford it, we could be looking at a species killer," Professor of Immunology at the Bangkok University Hospital, Pak Thang Wilson, told ZI today.
"Our models show 60% of the population by 2070 would be over the age of 100. 25% of those in the age range of 100-110 would be severly handicapped, either mentally or physically. Of those who survive to 120-130 years, 55% would be handicapped," he said.
Your ZI reporter hit the streets to ask the average Jakarta pedestrian what they thought of this scenario. "If I have a 45% chance of staying relatively healthy until the age of 130, I'm going to take it thankyou!" was the typical response.
"That's why we are calling it the Doomsday Drug," Professor Pak said when I told him this, "You are going to finish up with a minority healthy population under the age of 70, working to support a majority unhealthy population who will become decrepit from the age of 100 and may live another 50 years!"
by Salim ali Salim, Jakarta
March 30 2050
"If longevity therapy had been available two hundred years ago, Charles Darwin might have called it the 'Doomsday Drug' "
This is the stark warning to emerge from one of the speakers at the WHO CCR5 Gene Therapy global crisis meeting in Jakarta this week.
The conference was urgently called by the WHO to discuss the implications of CCR5 based therapies going off patent in 2055 and becoming both cheap, and widely available throughout the world.
Unless you are Rumplestiltskin, you would know the CCR5 was the wonder treatment launched in 2019 in Europe, as a cure for HIV, but it had the side effect of making CCR5 treated patients highly resistant to a range of other mortal conditions such as skin and breast cancer, pneumonia, influenza and various other contagious diseases. People treated with CCR5 were soon shown to have an average life expectancy 20 years longer than the normal population, with one documented case of a CCR5 treated man living to the age of 153.
Until now though, the incredibly expensive therapy has been limited by most governments to either people who can prove they have either HIV or relevant cancers, or to the very rich who fly to clinics in South Korea, Thailand, or Brazil for a course of CCR5.
The therapy is not without side effects. It does not slow the aging process and has no beneficial effect on brain function, so although CCR5 treated patients are not beset by chronic diseases, they can still become demented or be effected by Alzheimers disease, and have to live with it for decades.
Similarly, they can be effected by strokes and brain haemmorages, and face decades in a vegetative state, or handicapped. The cost to society is already huge and has forced several nations, led by the richer Scandinavian states, to enact laws allowing euthenasia of CCR5 patients who have been diagnosed with dementia or final stage Alzheimers disease.
"If copy-drug makers are able to start mass producing CCR5 therapy, and it gets down to a price where the average middle class person can afford it, we could be looking at a species killer," Professor of Immunology at the Bangkok University Hospital, Pak Thang Wilson, told ZI today.
"Our models show 60% of the population by 2070 would be over the age of 100. 25% of those in the age range of 100-110 would be severly handicapped, either mentally or physically. Of those who survive to 120-130 years, 55% would be handicapped," he said.
Your ZI reporter hit the streets to ask the average Jakarta pedestrian what they thought of this scenario. "If I have a 45% chance of staying relatively healthy until the age of 130, I'm going to take it thankyou!" was the typical response.
"That's why we are calling it the Doomsday Drug," Professor Pak said when I told him this, "You are going to finish up with a minority healthy population under the age of 70, working to support a majority unhealthy population who will become decrepit from the age of 100 and may live another 50 years!"
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