Strange News of the Week: January 21, 2008

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And now, the interesting side of the news of the week.

On Thursday, a Hawian child was hurled from a highway overpass, some 30 feet up, into the heavy traffic below. According to witnesses, the not-quite two-year-old was struck by at least two cars after landing.

Medical examiners determined that Cyrus Belt, whose 2^nd birthday would have been next month, died from "multiple blunt force injuries due to fall from height."

Police arrested a neighbor of the child, a 23-year-old. Charges are pending.

The man was reportedly holding Cyrus over his head on a pedestrian overpass, and then dropped him. He struck the pavement at over 20 miles per hour. Unable to avoid a collision, at least two vehicles then ran him over.

The unidentified assailant was wearing green hospital scrubs at the time. While being arrested, he screamed, "Thank you!" to reporters, and rocked himself in the back of a police car.

A police spokesperson said he was taken to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation. The police did not yet know if he had a history of mental illness or a criminal record.

How exactly the man got ahold of the child is still being investigated. According to Cyrus's mother, Nancy Chanco, "He was strange ... not all there." She said she would never let the neighbor take care of Cyrus.

The suspect seemed obsessed with Cyrus. Chanco said, "He always tried to hold the baby."

"How can somebody do that?" she asked of reporters.

She has two other children, a boy of 16, and another son, 5.

Mourners are already visiting the site. On Friday, balloons and stuffed animals covered the wall of the walkway where Cyrus was killed.

And, in Alaska, a girl of 13 was arrested for touching boys.

Young girls are sometimes into unusual hobbies. Some ride ponies. Some collect stamps. Some volunteer in soup kitchens.

One girl, a 13-year-old, from Sutton Alaska, though, apparently likes boys - a little too much.

On January 9^th, Palmer Police Det. Kelly Turner was called to Palmer Junior Middle School to investigate a sexual assault. Because all the involved parties are juveniles, few details have been made available, but this is what is known:

Two boys claimed that the girl in question touched them over their clothing on the school bus. In separate statements, they asserted that they told their assailant to stop repeatedly, but she refused to do so.

Turner ended up arresting the girl.

Police generally have wide discretion in a case like this. According to police, the most severe action was warranted in this case.

The girl was charged with two counts of second-degree harassment, one count of second-degree sexual assault for each victim, and attempted second-degree sexual assault.

Police issued a statement, saying that while they could not reveal any specifics of the evidence that they collected, the facts justified the most extreme measures available: incarcerating the girl.

Detective Turner says he is aware of what the public is saying about the arrest of a such a young girl. Needless to say, many members of the community are quite upset.

However, "If you have an instance where a behavior is occurring and another person, whether it be an adult or a juvenile, and that behavior is asked to cease and that behavior continues ... you have to follow through on that."

To be truly fair, though, police have to ignore the gender of the suspect. Turner explained: "Reverse the genders and if a boy ... touches a girl inappropriately on the school bus, and the school district and the police don't take action, can you imagine the outcry there would be?"

Again, because of the age of the girl and the two boys involved, the details are not being released. The girl is being held in the Mat-Su Youth Facility, and, as of Wednesday, no bail had been set.

And, to wrap up the highlights for this week, here's a story about this week's most significant scientific breakthrough.

Headline: Man Clones Himself

In one of the most controversial breakthroughs in years, a California scientist has cloned himself, the first-ever report of a human clone being created from an adult.

Humans have been cloned before, but all the previous efforts have been focused on embryos. Never has a fully viable human undergone the procedure.

Using the same technology that brought the world Dolly the sheep, Samuel Wood created genetic duplicates of himself by extracting the DNA from his skin cells, and implanting it into a woman's egg.

The embryonic clones were only kept for five days before they were harvested for stem cells, a process that destroys an embryo.

All previous stem cells lines were created using other stem cells. It is an understatement to say it is 'difficult' to manipulate an adult cell, one already matured into a specialized form, to revert to a stem cell state. Ethics aside, the achievement is beyond merely remarkable.

Stem cells are used in research geared towards developing treatments - or even cures - for numerous diseases, including Parkinson's, M.S., Alzheimer's, and Diabetes, among others.

Stem cells are invaluable tools, not just for research, but for medical treatments. They each possess the capability to become any kind of cell, form any tissue, in the whole of the human body.

Now that humanity has the capability to produce a stem cell line from a fully viable individual, possibly one who actually suffers from one of these disorders, the quest to find answers has taken a vast leap forward.

Cloned embryonic stem cells have the advantage of being perfect genetic matches to their donors. Meaning, among other things, that any tissues or organs grown from them will be rejection-proof: they literally are the same as the donor's original organs.

But the moral implications are not to be overshadowed. Many critics accuse Dr. Wood of paving the way for the mass-production of designer humans, or, possibly, laying the foundation of a 'spare parts' industry.

Also, because embryos are destroyed in the harvesting process, segments of the population are in an uproar over the matter. Many see the practice as killing a human in order to experiment on the corpse.

This is an especially touchy issue in this case. Since the clones are genetic duplicates of humans who are clearly viable, there can be no question that, if allowed to follow their due course, and barring a miscarriage, the embryos would definitely develop into fully functional, living humans.

With other stem cell lines, the question of viability leans towards positive, but there is no certain answer. In this case, there is. Scientists are artificially creating human life with the specific intent to destroy it, a concept that opponents find rather more than repugnant.

"We have people creating human beings with the intention of destroying them. That's appalling," said John Smeaton, of the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children. "We have got scientists wandering around in an ethical wilderness, forgetting about matters of justice relating to our fellow human beings."

The Vatican is also taking a stand against the practice, condemning it as the "worst type of exploitation of the human being."

The Scottish Council on Human Bioethics called the creation and destruction of human embryos "extremely offensive to millions."

But spokespeople on the other side of the debate don't see the matter that way. Many argue that the clones, like all early embryos, aren't technically "alive." What's more, since they are created to do research, their destruction is irrelevant. They would not exist at all, if not for the purpose of the research.

There is no capacity for pain, no awareness to feel loss or death, and, most importantly, they are literally the tissue of an adult, and therefore that person's property. Some would even say they are, by extension, a part of that person's own body.

"Nobody tells me I can't get a tattoo, because it might 'damage some cells'," a blogger writes.

But the crux of the argument rests on the concept of 'the greater good'. Is it right to destroy a potential life - even one created specifically for research - if it will help countless people living with a debilitating or life-threatening disease?

Is ending what could be a person's life an acceptable cost, when not doing so places millions in jeopardy? And is this even a question that should be reduced to a 'lesser of two evils' argument?

While the controversy rages on, the fact remains: humans have crossed an important threshold. There is no going back. The clones have arrived.

For your UFO tale, here's a strange sighting actually made the press:

Dozens of people in the Texas town of Stephenville reported seeing a large object with bright lights flying silently at very low altitude on January 8^th. The reports, which include statements from a professional pilot, a county sheriff, and several reputable business owners, state that the object was only about 300 feet up in the air, and was being pursued by fighter jets.

The nearest military installation, in Ft. Worth, said they had no fighters in the air that night.

The pilot, Steve Allen, says, "Everyone is afraid it's the end of times."

Erath County Constable Lee Roy Gaitan said, "It wasn't an airplane, and I've never seen anything like it. It must be some kind of military craft - at least, I hope it was."

In other news, police in Maine seized a winning lottery ticket, claiming it was purchased with drug money. On the opposite end, a judge ruled this week that a man who violated his parole by purchasing a lottery ticket can keep his winnings: $1,000,000. Incidentally, he was on parole from a conviction for bank robbery.

Researchers have discovered a self-destructing tree in Madagascar. This new speicies was only just identified because of its curious habit of flowering, then dying - for 100 years.

For the first time since 1975, we're getting close-up pictures of Mercury. NASA's MESSENGER probe has made contact, and sent us over a thousand new pictures, special delivery.

The entire nation has had terrible weather lately, and most of the country is going to stay frozen and miserable for at least another week. But the crappiest weather in the land award goes to Fulton, NY. In two solid days of snow, Fulton racked up over five feet in some areas. The snow was so heavy, in a literal kind of way, that the roof of the city's DPW building collapsed under all the weight.

The irony here is that the Department of Public Works are the guys who remove snow from things.