Current Affairs for IAS Exams - 26 September 2013

ISPs lack tools to block communal content on web

• The government’s repeated failures to take down communally charged content is, for the most part, due to technological shortcomings on the part of the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) who simply do not possess the tools required for specific and limited blockings.
• While a national debate rages over the regulation of internet and social media following the recent riots in Muzaffarnagar, it must be noted that on September 10, the government ordered the blocking of 26 URLs, mostly Facebook and a few YouTube, Daily Motion, etc.
• This was followed by a list of 82 blockings on September 18, of which a majority were on Facebook, and many on Twitter, though not necessarily related to the Uttar Pradesh riots alone.
• In both cases, the orders were issued under specific provisions consistent with the Gazette notification G.S.R. 181(E), of February 27, 2003, which authorises the government to block harmful content by following a process laid down under Section 69A of the IT Act 2008.
• While Communications and IT Minister Kapil Sibal and CERT-IN have been getting the flak for blocking broad content, the blocking orders were worded to avoid misuse or overreach.

At last, a Bill to control unethical practices in biomedical, health research

• Research on human subjects in the specified areas like assisted reproductive technology (ART); organ, tissue and cell therapy; genetic and genomic studies including techniques of genetic engineering and gene therapy; nano medicines; bio-banking; neurosciences, mental health studies and health related socio-cultural, economic and behavioural studies will all fall under the ambit of the proposed new law.
• In the general areas of research, clinical studies involving human participants or material for development and evaluation of tools and strategies for promotion, prevention, amelioration and rehabilitation of diseases, or development of diagnostic tests or procedures, storage and use of biological materials; and scientific investigations required to understand processes which affect health, cause disease and influence human well-being; and translational study taking new leads will also be covered under the Biomedical Research Regulation Bill once it is approved by Parliament.
• However, clinical trials involving systematic study of new drugs, medical devices, vaccines and cosmetics on human subjects will not fall under the purview of the proposed law.
• In addition to this Bill, the existing laws including Drugs and Cosmetics Act, the Human Organ Transplantation Act, the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act, the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act and the Mental Health Act, too, will be applicable.
• The Bill focuses on the entitlements of a human participant during research making him eligible to be paid “due remuneration, compensation or reimbursement for the time lost, besides reimbursement of travelling and other incidental expenses incurred in connection with his participation in research.’’
• The amount shall be decided by the ethics committee and shall not be such which can be considered as inducement for participation in research.
• According to the Bill, the investigator and the institution shall take appropriate steps to safeguard the interest of special or vulnerable groups while the ethics committees shall ensure that individuals, groups or communities proposed to be subjected to research are selected by the investigator in such a way that the “burden and benefits’’ are equally distributed.
• Human biological materials or data shall be used only after the express consent of the human participant and for the primary intended purpose approved by the ethics committee, and any request for secondary use of the human biological material or data shall be separately examined by the ethics committee.
• Important, according to the proposed Bill, there would be no bio-banking of the human biological material without consent of the human participant which should be governed by the specific principles of bio-banking.
• Further, the Bill says that investigator shall maintain strict confidentiality of all research data which might lead to identification of the individual participant to avoid any consequent stigmatisation and discrimination unless he/she is under obligation to disclose the information to any official or the government department concerned under the provisions of any law.
• “The confidentiality clause shall be incorporated in the information sheet while obtaining consent of the participant,’’ the Bill says.
• On the informed consent, the Bill says in every biomedical and health research involving human participants, the investigator must obtain voluntary, documented, informed consent after being fully informed of his involvement in the research and also to withdraw the consent given earlier.

Vaccination with an inhaler rather than a jab

• When an effective vaccine against the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) becomes available, it may well be given through a puff from an inhaler rather than as an injection.
• Many germs, including HIV, gain entry into the body through moist tissue — the mucosa — that line the airways, alimentary canal, and the reproductive tract.
• When the vaccine was administered to the airway of mice, immune cells patrolling the lining of the respiratory tract efficiently took in the nanocapsules and produced a strong immune response.
• Moreover, immune cells primed by the vaccine were detected in the gut and reproductive tract as well.
• “they found that the nanocapsule vaccine promoted greater immunological memory at multiple mucosal tissue sites” than when the same vaccine components were given in solution,
• He and the other scientists also showed that mice immunised with an appropriate nanocapsule vaccine were much better protected when infected with the vaccinia virus.
• “To date, strategies to enhance responses elicited by synthetic nanoparticle vaccines have largely focused on engineering the vaccine carrier itself, for example, to obtain optimal surface chemistry or particle size,” the scientists observed in their paper.
• Besides HIV, this approach could be of interest for vaccines against many other mucosal pathogens, such as the human papillomavirus, herpes simplex virus, influenza and tuberculosis,

Oldest infectious disease of humans

• Modern humans (or homo sapiens) emerged out of the “hominid” group almost two million years ago, and began wandering out of Africa about 70,000 years ago to populate the world.
• How healthy were these people? What kind of illnesses affected them? Do we carry these afflictions to this date?
• Questions such as these form the main research themes for a group of scientists who call themselves paleopathologists — paleo for ancient and pathology to define and describe the kind of illness
• The clue to zone in on the most ancient infection comes from both a study of bone abnormalities (seen in excavated bodies and mummies) and from analysis of all the DNA present in them.
• Such a double analysis, plus information contained in ancient texts from across the world suggest the presence of ten diseases to be among the oldest to affect mankind. These are: tuberculosis (or TB), leprosy, cholera, smallpox, rabies, malaria, pneumonia, trachoma (chronic infection of the eyelid), influenza, measles and the black plaque.
• This list has been compiled by analysing information available from ancient texts and books such as the Vedas, the Bible, Greek history, oriental texts and oral history.
• The Rigveda (about 1500 BC) refers to TB and leprosy, the Egyptian “Ebers papyrus” (about 1500 BC) mentions leprosy, Thucydides of Greece (430 BC) mentions the plague, the Bible (Leviticcus 13.2) talks about leprosy and the Romans describe malaria.
• Aboriginal skeletons (800 BC) have shown skull lesions around the eyes, later suggested by circumstantial evidence as due to trachoma.
• Sundem also refers to the analysis in Israel of the fossilized bones of a mother and child (estimated to be about 9000 years old) revealing the infection as due to TB, and also to a Turkish sample even older (50,000 years old!) again with the suggestion of TB affliction. It would thus seem that mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) may well be the oldest pathogen to have infected humankind.
• MTB comes not as single strain but there are as many as 259 varieties that we know of today.
• Yet, DNA analysis of these strains has revealed not a great deal of diversity or heterogeneity, but very few mutations and nearly identical DNA sequences.
• Earlier work on such low level genetic variation, call it mycobacterium proto-tuberculosis , which could be as old as 3 million years. And the question is — when did this divergence from the single ancestor progenitor occur, how closely related in their DNA these 250 strains are and how sensitive or resistant each set of these strains is towards anti-tubercular drugs that we have today.

Methane spewing island rises from sea

• For the third time in 15 years, the movement of tectonic plates in the Makran area has caused a methane and mud spewing island to form off the coast of Gwadar in Balochistan, according to the National Institute of Oceanography (NIO), Pakistan.
• The sea from Gwadar to Ormara had a vast stock of frozen methane gas below the sea bed and it was not uncommon to see bubbles in the water caused by methane gas escaping from fissures,
• The land mass — which had people rushing to the coast to view it — is 50 metres long, 20 to 30 metres wide and rises 10 metres above the water about two km off the coast of Gwadar.
• However, in the past it is observed that these “islands” decline slowly due to constant wave action in the sea. In 1999 it was observed that after four months, it had vanished. The sea bed showed up some remnants of the land mass at that time. This phenomenon was observed as far back as 1945 as well,

Sources: Various News Papers & PIB