2013-06-19T06:17:25-04:00 Sophia Moseley http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/author/index.php?author=sophia-moseley Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Sophia Moseley Good old fashioned elbow grease. tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2835999 2013-03-08T07:34:42-05:00 2013-05-08T05:12:01-04:00

Sophia Moseley http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sophia-moseley/
With its roots in American soil - the first nationally recognised Women's Day was on 28 February 1909, rather surprisingly the celebration was then adopted by the socialists and communists in the form of Russia, China and Spain. China even took it one step further in 1949 and generously allowed women in China to have a half day holiday!

It wasn't until 1977 that the Western World officially observed the day and made 8 March the day to recognise, amongst other things, women's rights. And so it has grown in significance ever since.

But the whole one day celebration thing got me thinking; just one day to shout about women's rights, their strengths, the 'benefit' of having them around?

It's a bit like when someone dies, especially when it's someone who has been in the public eye; everyone sings their praises, talks about how the deceased excelled, if only they had done this or that, the regrets from people who say 'if only I had done more of (whatever) with him/her' or 'had they been given that opportunity, they could have....' So lots of regrets and 'if only's' but now the person has gone for good, it is too late.

So my point is, why have just one day to recognise the strengths and importance of a person? Why not highlight the worth of a woman all the time so there can be no regrets or if only's throughout the other 364 days of the year?

Each day calls on the qualities that make women different - yes we are different from men, we think differently, we react differently and I say vive la difference!

Perhaps it's getting the children ready for school whilst juggling a full time job, helping an aged parent, thinking about the weekly food budget, trying to find time (and sometimes effort) for a husband or partner who often feel neglected and resent having to take second place.

Women are pulled in all directions day after day and it is due to their strength and resilience that they can keep going day after day.

So don't restrict the celebration of our strength to just one day; to every woman throughout the world, appreciate your strengths, shout out about them, if you are juggling children/home/work/aged parents/your own life, then celebrate your ability to do that every day!

Any shortfall in the physical strength quota is more than made up for in your psychological might; it's just not quite so easy for everyone to see but perhaps it's time to start rippling those mental muscles.

(Just a final thought, given our propensity to overlook strengths and highlight weakness, as a mother, take a look at your children and stop yourself when you tell them off for their weaknesses and let's face it, we do tell off our children a lot; step back and think about their strengths and encourage those. Use the carrot not the stick.)]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2540325 2013-01-24T05:21:30-05:00 2013-03-26T05:12:01-04:00

Sophia Moseley http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sophia-moseley/
The Ancient Greek word klon describes the way a new plant can be grown from a twig; a natural method of horticultural reproduction. The modern term 'clone' describes the method of artificially producing genetically identical organisms.

Whilst there have been various experiments going on for hundreds of years, it was when James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the 'double helix' (the twisted ladder structure) of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) in 1953 that a scientific milestone was marked.

Some 40 years after this discovery, the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute near Cambridge was established as the British arm of the Human Genome Project to progress the work and development of DNA science.

The completion of the human DNA sequence was discovered in the spring of 2003.

The first successfully DNA produced animal was Dolly the Sheep whose existence was triumphantly revealed to the world in February 1997 when she was 7 months old. Dr Ian Wilmut, embryologist at the Roslin Institute said "it will enable us to study genetic diseases ... and track down the mechanisms that are involved."

This event was the springboard to raising public awareness and acceptance of the process, but 15 years later, are we any closer to agreeing with the artificial reproduction of organisms to meet our constant demands?

Dolly sadly suffered from respiratory problems and arthritis and was eventually put down in 2003.

But has the world of science reined in its desire to exploit new discoveries or has it now ventured into the commercial sphere where there will always be demand and a better return on their investment?

In August 2010 it was discovered that two bulls grown from the embryos of a cow cloned in America had entered the UK food chain. The bulls had not only sired 100 cows on the Scottish farm, but one of the bulls slaughtered in July 2009 was sold as beef to consumers.

American biotechnology companies clone cows extensively now for their higher milk and meat yield and in 2008, the US Food and Drug Administration stated milk and meat from cloned animals was safe for human consumption. To date, the UK government has not made any ruling.

There are now cloned cows, pigs, sheep and chickens; all of these animals have been created with a view to improving their usefulness in the human food chain.

But what about human cloning; if scientists can create animals why not humans?

In May 2005, Newcastle University removed genetic material from 11 human eggs and replaced it with the DNA from embryonic stem cells to clone a human embryo.

This technique is called somatic cell nuclear transfer and the crucial part of the procedure is to keep the time from when the egg is harvested to when it is 'manipulated' to within 15 minutes; the longest a human embryo has survived under these conditions is 5 days.

Supporters of the process say there are many benefits including learning how to fight disease and helping with infertility. This form of DNA science is called 'therapeutic cloning' and Edinburgh's Centre for Regenerative Medicine has created brain tissue from patients suffering from schizophrenia and other mental illnesses.

Some of the discoveries include: the BRCA2 gene linked to increased risk of breast cancer that was discovered in 1992 and in 1993 the MSH2 gene linked to the increased risk of colon cancer was found.

The UN voted in favour of a ban on all human cloning but it was 'non-binding' so the UK continues to experiment with cloned embryos from which stem cells can be used to treat disease. However, 'reproductive cloning' was made illegal in the UK in 2001.

But some scientists remain unphased by public reaction and following the discovery in September 2012 of some mammoth hair, soft tissue and bone marrow in the Yakutia area of Siberia, the US based 'X Prize Foundation' has said they will award a "Jurassic Park Prize" to the first person who manages to recreate an extinct prehistoric animal. There is already talk of recreating Neanderthal Man. I can't help but feel this 'theme park' attitude is devaluing any good that might have come out of the process.

Then in November 2012, Brazilian scientists started to work on the cloning of existing animals including jaguars, anteaters and wolves: their purpose to supply animals for zoos.

So there is no doubt that some scientists have seen the commercial value in cloning and are prepared to exploit the process for their own gains.

But when it was recently revealed that 4 sheep had been cloned from Dolly and were created in 2007 and the only reason it came to light was that Professor Campbell mentioned it during a European Parliamentary debate, you cannot help but question just what might be going on behind closed doors.

The preserved body of Dolly the Sheep is on display at the National Museum of Scotland, is it just a matter of time before one of the nationally acclaimed museums has preserved remains of the first humanoid on display?

Repugnant it may be, feasible and likely? Almost definitely.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.2540274 2013-01-24T05:13:41-05:00 2013-03-26T05:12:01-04:00

Sophia Moseley http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sophia-moseley/
If you feel something is wrong on a national scale then perhaps you should think about asking your MP to raise the matter at government level.

There used to be just two methods of getting your message across; you could lobby your MP or send a 'paper' petition to the House of Commons; but now there is a third way - the e-petition.

The e-petition was launched in August 2011 and is run by the rather unimaginatively named Government Digital Service (GDS), a team within the Cabinet whose task it is to transform the government's digital services in an attempt to keep up with the ever changing world of electronic media.

The paper based system of petitioning still exists but the e-petition was heralded as "an easy, personal way for you to influence government and Parliament in the UK."

So if you wanted your grievance to be aired during Parliamentary time, this was the way to do it or so we were led to believe.

The e-petition process was set up to streamline the system but also sift out the rubbish as there are strict rules you have to follow to get past the first, second and third post.

The first hurdle to get over: are you repeating a topic that has been raised in the past? If so, then yours will be rejected.

You must then choose the correct government department and if you don't, that will delay matters as the clerks decide where it should go.

Then there is the content of the petition, it cannot hold confidential, libellous, false, defamatory or offensive statements and jokes or nonsense are also out (does the civil service have a sense of humour?).

The petition must also be a 'request for action' in other words you want the MP to try and bring about a change in the law.

If your e-petition is rejected for any of the above reasons, you will get an email explaining why.

So let's suppose your e-petition has met all the necessary criteria, what happens next?

Well that was the easy part, what you now have to do is obtain 100,000 e-signatures to allow the petition to reach the next stage, and each of those people have to supply a name, postal address and email address.

Your e-petition is 'open' for 12 months during which time you need to collect the necessary number of signatures. This is where many of the newspaper campaigns are successful due to their readership numbers.

But let's assume you manage to gather the required number of signatures; after all that hard work you would think the next step would be your e-petition being heard in the House of Commons. In fact many people presume that this is the case.

Not so; there is no guarantee it will be heard. All petitions, whether conventional paper ones or electronic, are put into a green bag that hangs behind the Speaker's Chair and it is only if the minister in question is granted enough time that the petition is put before the House.

To give you some idea of the success rate of e-petitions, in the 12 months to August 2012 the GDS that is headed up by Peter Herlihy recorded:

◾36,000 e-petitions submitted
◾47% were rejected
◾1,600 valid e-petitions were 'opened'
◾17 million unique site visits
◾38% of visitors signed an e-petition
◾6,400,000 signatures were collected
◾10 e-petitions attained the required 100,000 signatures

So it doesn't take a genius to work out the system does not seem to add much value to our democratic right to petition our MPs and in fact Labour MP Natascha Engel warned the government in November 2011 that the public would become disillusioned with the new e-political process. Engel said:

"The popular expectation is that when it reaches the magic 100,000 threshold not only does it trigger a debate, but a debate on the floor of the house, a vote and then a change in the law. I don't think it is possible to change that perception."

The other disturbing fact is that the data can be reused to analyse the geographic distribution of sentiment on contentious public issues.

So it looks like the Big Brother family is growing albeit surreptitiously.]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1740455 2012-08-04T03:20:20-04:00 2012-10-03T05:12:02-04:00

Sophia Moseley http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sophia-moseley/
Even though it is inevitable, death is not a very popular topic of conversation and as it is a trait of human nature to avoid the unpleasant; we avert our eyes from a disturbing scene and put the telephone bill to the bottom of the pile; we rarely think about our own mortality and what may happen in the months or years leading up to our final moments.

Will it be a peaceful and gentle death during your sleep, or will you spend your final years in mental or physical disintegration that requires daily assistance to perform the simplest of bodily functions?

There can be few of us who anticipate problems and set up a system to deal with them, whether it is putting money aside for first class medical care or writing a living will.

But even allowing for your wishes, as a UK citizen, it is not as easy as you may think to decide on your method of despatch.

Euthanasia, which also goes by the name of assisted suicide, is illegal in the UK and the ethics surrounding a person's choice of death have been debated for centuries.

It is only since the Suicide Act 1961 that the act of suicide itself was decriminalised so if the person failed to kill themselves they would not be prosecuted.

But what is the difference between suicide and euthanasia?

Generally suicide involves one person who cannot cope with life's challenges e.g. unhappiness or debt and euthanasia relates to the relief of pain and suffering e.g. if someone is dying from a painful unpleasant illness. Some say suicide is an act of cowardice whereas euthanasia is an act of mercy.

There are three categories of euthanasia: voluntary, non voluntary and involuntary, each one having their own legal definition that has become necessary due to the complexities of the procedure, and the law relating to it varies from country to country.

For example active voluntary euthanasia when help is given by administering a lethal dose of a sedative for instance, is legal in Belgium and the Netherlands and passive voluntary euthanasia when essential treatment is withheld, is legal throughout the United States. In both cases, the person suffering makes the decision to end their life.

Involuntary or non voluntary euthanasia when the person does not wish to die but is killed anyway amounts to murder and is illegal throughout the world. The only exception might be when the consent of the person is not possible e.g. a baby whose life, should it be permitted to live, would be so intolerably painful and unpleasant that the law would allow euthanasia to take place. This happened recently when a judge ruled Baby X life support should be withdrawn.

The debate surrounding euthanasia continues with religious, ethical and practical considerations coming into play.

During their annual conference in June this year, the British Medical Association (BMA) rejected the Healthcare Professionals for Assisted Dying (HPAD) request to change their opposition to a "studied" neutrality. The BMA confirmed their continued opposition to euthanasia saying that "a change in position would send the wrong message".

The campaign group Care Not Killing said the BMA's decision was "a victory for common sense... We hope the BMA will continue its valuable work... for high quality compassionate care for patients at the end of life".

But what about those of us who end up in a vegetative state and who do not wish to remain alive? What of our dignity, pride and human rights, or like so many of our traits, are these the human failings that have to be dealt with by those in authority?

Tony Nicklinson who hit the headlines recently with his right to die Twitter campaign and who can only communicate by blinking his eyes, is asking for his rights to be respected as he campaigns to be allowed to die with dignity, having been left completely paralysed following a stroke in 2005.

However, the law says it will not support euthanasia because of the responsibilities a person has towards their family and friends and the effect the death would have on their emotional well being, i.e. an individual cannot unilaterally decide to end their life.

So to go back to my opening paragraph, strange as it may seem, one of the reasons the UK will not make euthanasia legal is because of the effect your death will have on others.

Fair or not?]]> tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1704628 2012-07-29T19:00:00-04:00 2012-09-28T05:12:10-04:00

Sophia Moseley http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sophia-moseley/
But when someone recently told me a local secondary school used a dildo to demonstrate how to put on a condom during their PSHE (personal, social and health education) class, my jaw hit the floor with incredulity. But when I suggested this was a step too far in our culture of 'everyone must know everything as soon as possible', the person imparting his greater knowledge shouted me down and told it was essential children were told every detail.

I decided the audience at a friend's barbecue was not either the time or the place, but given a different time and location, I would have stood my ground and argued the point.

But perhaps I am out of touch? Maybe it really is essential our children are drilled with endless quantities of sexually explicit material so that they can avoid the pitfalls of our forebears in the form of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and unwanted pregnancies.

However the statistics indicate our attempts to prevent problems are falling on deaf ears; to give you some idea of what we are up against, the Department of Health figures for 2011 recorded 196,082 abortions and 3,258 of those were for girls aged 16 years or younger and in 2009 there were 482,696 new cases of STDs reported and two thirds of these were amongst females aged 15-24.

So does the modern method of sex education 'educate' or encourage experimentation and exploitation? Has sex education's evolution made a difference?

Whilst condoms (made from a variety of materials including sheep gut and leather) have been around for centuries, the history of sex education is a little vague.

Ancient Egyptians used pessaries made from various formulas including acacia gum, a mixture of honey and sodium carbonate and crocodile dung, to prevent conception.

However, following the 14th Century Great Plague, in their effort to repopulate Europe, the Church policy was to destroy all knowledge of birth control including the persecution of midwives.

It was following the Second World War when the combination of population migration and the influx of soldiers led to a change in national policy and children were educated in an attempt to halt the spread of syphilis and gonorrhoea.

So by the 1970s sex education had become part of the curriculum and since the emergence of the AIDS virus in the 1980s, there has been a national campaign to raise awareness as to the dangers of unprotected sex.

In recent years, the lessons have encompassed a whole raft of other socially motivated issues e.g. relationships, homosexuality and masturbation.

There is still a parental option to withdraw your child from the class but given the consequences of this i.e. peer pressure and victimisation, it is likely every child will be educated at some point during their school life.

But even with graphic sex education children often learn more from friends or the media however, with 26 girls in every 1,000 aged between 15-19 falling pregnant, the UK still has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe; this compares with the Netherlands where it is just five in every 1,000.

Diane Abbot , Shadow Minister for Public Health, said "the rising number of girls having under age sex is alarming... The underlying cause must be the 'pornification' of British culture..."

A sexual health survey carried out by the Health and Social Care Information Centre showed men averaged 9.3 female partners in a lifetime whilst women had 4.7 male partners and 20% of the men questioned said they have had under age sex compared with 14% of women (the age of consent in the UK is 16 for both heterosexual and homosexual activity).

Conversely only 30% of men sought contraception advice compared with 45% of women with men preferring to buy over the counter supplies and women seeking advice from health professionals.

2010 data showed a high but stable rate of STD's, the most common being chlamydia with 189,612 cases and genital warts with 75,615 cases reported.

England is one of the few countries that has established a specific programme for prevention and control of chlamydia, the National Chlamydia Screening Programme.

So what is it that is going wrong, with children as young as four being sexually educated and the teenage conception rate at 40 in every 1,000 under 18 year old girls, it would seem our saturation of sex education is not having the desired effect?

Has the national culture of binge drinking, excessive behaviour and lack of respect for those in authority that has developed over the years, combined to create a promiscuous youth that seeks their own sexual gratification at the cost of destroying the depleting morals and principles of our society?

But it is wrong to expect the schools to re-educate children when the seed of illicit behaviour has already been sown, it is family life and parenting where the rot sets in and it is also here where the standard has to be set.

But what hope of that?]]>