Stem cell swindlers- support to the FDA

Stem cells:  promises, still to be confirmed

In a recent blog, I explained how the American authorities were brought to approve an ineffective drug, Sarepta, in Duchenne myopathy, under pressure from desperate patients well handled by swindlers. A similar story, but on a much greater scale, is emerging about stem cells, and there is muddy backwater where a lot of interested crocodiles jiggle.

 Stem cells are little differentiated cells able to transform in some (pluripotent stem cells) or all (totipotent stem cells) tissue types. This is the case of embryonic cells, but there are, in many adult tissues, stem cells - the oldest known are hematopoietic stem cells from bone marrow, able to differentiate into all blood cells. So bone marrow transplant to treat leukemia is the first cell therapy using stem cells, practiced since the 1970s. Similarly, skin stem cells are used since the 1980s to reconstitute the different layers of the epidermis for severely burned patients. In this sense, cell stem cell therapy is a well validated technique.

The use of embryonic cells, and furthermore the many discoveries of adult stem cells that have occurred, and even much more the discovery that it is possible to take many adult cells (for example, from epidermis) and turn them into stem cells by a  pretty simple and universal genetic manipulation  to give IPS  (induced pluripotent cells)  (a discovery for which Shinya Yamanaka  won the 2012 Nobel Prize for medicine)  have led to an explosion of hopes in this technique. Thus,  a flow of publications suggesting that it is possible to regenerate heart cells after a heart attack, regenerate neurons after strokes, cure macular degeneration by IPS cells differentiated into cornea cells have appeared. Hopes are also emerging in a number of neurodegenerative diseases.

Hopes, yes, but the path will be long. It is often not enough to inject cells so that they are implanted, it seems that they have first to be organized into micro-tissues. The results are sometimes difficult to reproduce. The use of stem cells is not devoid of potential dangers: rejection problems if they come from a donor, risk of tumor growth if they are induced, etc... The interpretation of the results is often difficult; Thus, in the case of the treatment of sequelae of strokes, the observed effect does not appear to be directly linked to stem cells (the injected cells disappear), but by the secretion of various substances.

So I think whe should call researchers to self-discipline and moderation, to caution and responsibility towards patients; even if it is difficult, we should call them to the understatement of their results rather than fancy proclamations; because they have to realize that there are many swindlers and crooks in the stem cells domain that will not hesitate to use their publications to defraud desperate patients.

The backwater and crocodiles of stem cells

Le Monde  (14, 11, 2016) has devoted an article to this topic (Stem cells, beware of fake treatments). Thus patients with ALS (SLA) illness resulting from the degeneration of motor neurons, which evolves to death within a few years, in the face of a medicine that remains powerless, are solicited by private clinics or doctors offering "miracle cures"  based on stem cells. "Patients are ready to go in any protocol or in any clinical trial, rather than stay in passivity, even overriding the rules of clinical research," says Jean-Paul Janssens (Geneva), who strives to alert them to the illegal nature of the treatment cell strains, which neither efficiency nor safety have been tested in humans". Jean-Paul Janssens remembers one of them who, some years ago, gave in to the offer of a clinic based in Tel Aviv, in Israel. The treatment cost him 35 000 Swiss francs (32 460 euros). His cells were taken in a clinic in French-speaking Switzerland before being sent to Israel to be isolated, treated and fed back, without success.

In the same Le Monde article, Leigh Turner, of the University of Minnesota noted: “Around 2008, we saw clinics appearing in countries where regulations are non-existent or little applied due to corruption, such as China, India, Mexico or the Caribbean. This statement is today no longer valid, those clinics now also grow in industrialized countries such as Australia, Japan, Switzerland, Florida or California. ». Thus the Swiss authority Swiss Medic became interested in the activities of two companies, Med Cell Europe and Swiss Medica (whose name is obviously looking to cause confusion with the Swiss regulatory agency itsel f!!). They claim to be able to cure more than 20 diseases, including ALS, Parkinson's, diabetes, heart attack... quoting on their sites dozens of publication in support of their claims. 

Swiss Medic put an end to their activities, but only in  Switzerland because Swiss Medica continues to recruit patients in Switzerland and send them in clinics to Russia and Serbia.

In Germany, Villa Medica claims the rather original and absolutely not validated use of fresh cells taken from sheep embryos. In Italy, for years, the Stamina Foundation treated patients suffering from neurodegenerative diseases by injections of stem cells –  “compassionate treatments”, without  any scientific basis; but Stamina was able to mobilize opinion and public authorities and even received public funds for his business. ”. The "inventor" of the Stamina method, Davide Vannoni, is today accused by Italian justice of fraud, conspiracy and usurpation of the title of doctor.

The swindlers at work and scientists responsabilities

An anecdote illustrates the methods of these swindlers: the Nobel Prize of medicine 2013 Jacky Shekman learned that the pro-Stamina lobby had cited him as one of their support because of an article criticizing the journal Nature; outraged, he answered in virulent terms: "my criticism of Nature have been distorted (...), they were not referring to the Stamina method. We (scientists), we call charlatans and snake oil salesmen who sell drugs whose effectiveness has not been attested ... From what I know, the Stamina method received no scientific validation, it has not been subject to clinical controls. Those who promote “miraculous” therapies without testing act criminally by exploiting vulnerable families who are desperately seeking treatment for their loved ones. »

The activity of these clinics exploiting the distress of patients has became so important that they organize lobbying defending their interests, involving the official agencies that track them. They rely on libertarian speeches and demagogic, explaining, for example, that FDA Regulation does more harm than good, that its rules lead to costs that impede innovation, they delay the arrival of innovations, that patients should be free to decide to hand themselves if they want to try these treatments, as if in despair they were free, lucid and competent to distinguish the scam of the scientific study.  Those people, those crooks are threatening FDA and other regulatory agencies, not the contrary ! And by manipulating desperate patients associations, their lobby has been successfull !; in Korea,  Japan, USA, bills are pushed forwards to break the regulatory framework of drugs put in place in all industrialized  countries for more than fifty years and allow commercialization of treatment based on stem cells on the basis of  very preliminary data !  They should not be allowed unless they have demonstrated their effectiveness and their safety according to recognized good practices !. Back to the Middle Age - Good profits for the swindlers, a return to the merchants of orvietans and theriaque!

It is the responsibility and honor of scientists to defeat the attempts of destabilization and circumvention of the regulatory agencies, to denounce the profiteers of the misfortune, and crooks who criminally exploit the hopes of stem cell, to ensure that their publications and statements are not diverted and exploited by charlatans, and, when they are aware of it,  to denounce them publicly as did Dr. Shekman, and, if necessary, supported by their institutions, to act through judicial. They should also be more careful in their publications. It is theirs to support the efforts of the agencies to prohibit these practices. Otherwise, the trust in the medical and therapeutic research will be even more challenged  and progress impossible, because people will be unable to  realize the difference between a clinical study conducted according to the rules of science and ethics and pure and simple charlatanism.

Positivism and secularism

Secularism as liberation: God is no more public concern

Gazettes are filled with the shouts of self-proclamed donors of lessons on secularism, which are really theological minds with a false nose.  One of the latest examples is  Chantal Delsol (Le Figaro, 26/08/2016 : "famous French secularism is nothing other than the obligation to silence his religion... the famous French tolerance of human rights applies ultimately only to those who look like us in every way... strange tolerance! Personally I find insane allowed these women to swim in their traditional garb (sic!) ".

So I found useful to recall  the positivist conception of secularism – for  Positivism is a current of thought which have played a significant role in the separation of Church and State in France.

Secularism is based on the principle of the separation of temporal and spiritual powers,  sound base of real anti-totalitarian thought since the confusion of the two can only lead to a dictatorship "where there is no alternative between the most abject submission and direct revolt" (Auguste Comte). In practice, it was summarized by Pierre Laffitte, Auguste Comte main disciple : "God is no longer of public order". 

On the other hand, no society, thought Comte, cannot live without a "common social doctrine": "in a population where the concourse of individuals to public order can no longer be determined by the voluntary and moral assent granted by all to a common social doctrine, there is no other expedient, to maintain harmony, that the sad alternative of  force or corruption." 

Finally, secularism fits in the great movement of theological emancipation of humanity, in a program first empirically followed in the intellectual development of mankind, then clearly claimed by the French Enlightenment : after being driven out of astronomy (ancient Greek), physics (Galilee to Laplace), chemistry (Lavoisier to Pasteur), biology (Darwin), God is now denied any role in the organisation of societies (sociology of Auguste Comte).

Secularism is not neutrality

Secularism is not neutrality. The secular State cannot be neutral when religions, apart from their temples, churches, mosques, want, openly or not, take control of public space and place themselves in contradiction with the common social doctrine of our societies. Thus, a religion has every right to teach in its temples that apostasy lead to death (of the soul?) ; but in the public space, it must be clear and clearly proclaimed that abandoning his religion is an absolute right. Thus, we considered that the fact that a Priest, a Rabbi, an Imam, a llama walking in the street  in their clerical suit is not in itself an offence against secularism (a reasonable accommodation that took some time- remember the “croa” accompanying priests in black in french streets -  finally a good idea that allows you to know at the outset who you are dealing with).

Therefore, there is no reason to prevent a nun in uniform to plunge feet into the water on a beach ; however, the secular State should intervene appropriately against the wearing of a veil masking the figure or a burkini on a beach, because they show a willingness to impose religious precepts in public space, precepts demeaning women, in complete contradiction with our common social doctrine which proclaims the equality of men and women and strives to make it more real (and there is still to do, which is another reason not to tolerate the retrograde attempts!) 

Similarly, if our common social doctrine considered the suffering of animals at  “halal” slaughter as unbearable (and there is a European directive in this sense) and impose stunning before killing , well the religions should adjust. Thus, Danish Muslim representatives simply decreed that animals stunned before being slaughtered were “halal”…

It's not that complicated, secularism, when we really want to defend it !

N.B the new mayor of London, Sadiq Khan allowed himself to criticize the French laws on islamic veil and burqinis ; but he did censor in London bare and retouched photos of top models.

Not a great incentive to elect a muslim as mayor in a major french city !

Eric Sartori

Le Socialisme d'Auguste Comte, aimer, penser, agir au XXIème siècle, l'Harmattan 2012

What jobs for tomorrow?

Economic French Journalists Association (AJEF) has devoted a series of lectures to changes in employment. Topics : "clash of new technologies and automation: what jobs will be created tomorrow and which will disappear?", with Augustin Landier, Toulouse School of Economics, and Olivier Passet, Director of Syntheses at Xerfi and   The end of wage labour is coming soon? Autoentrepreneurs, coworking, etc.: new forms of work" with Monique Dagnaud, sociologist, and Philippe Askenazy, Director of research CNRS -  Paris School of Economics.

Uberization : an ultra-liberal vision

Augustin Landier is a worthy representative of the school of Toulouse, which eventually would have us believe that there no other alternative than ultra liberalism, and that’s really nice since it will benefit the poor first. Therefore, Mr. Landier supports  El Khomri project and worked for Uber, past master of influence strategy, which commissioned a report showing that Uber would be a chance for the young mined by unemployment, and that these employees are well paid (3600 euros per month?, disputed figure valid only for those who are self-employed), young and more graduates than taxi drivers, and that, unlike the US, for most of them it's their only job and not a complement. Therefore, any attempt to regulate would increase unemployment. QED... to please the sponsor of the survey. Mr. Landier predicts a considerable expansion of uberisation which will gradually affect a large part of the functions of business, such as accounting, HR functions, various sharp expertise... There will be many highly qualified, well paid jobs which will be soon threatened by uberisation and M. Landier warns: this creative destruction shumpeterian process, which he likes, will lead to replace well paid jobs by others more precarious and less well paid. He cited with some relish the polytechniciens in their fifties who populates the staffs of large companies who will be threatened.

In praise of salarymen (and women)

At this idyllic description of the uberisation, Olivier Passet objects that Uber non-employees give to Uber not only their work, for a fallacious freedom (Uber selects those who work the most, unilaterally imposes reductions of tariffs, etc.) but  also give Uber their capital (their car, maintenance...)…for nothing.  Above all, companies like Uber are “clandestine passengers”, parasites, for they profit from a number of externalities (social protection, training, infrastructure etc.) that they do not finance.  This system is not viable. A business is something other than a pile of relations between internal customers /suppliers, but a complete system of collaboration. Uberisation results in the death of business and of society. Using the example of the Polytechninas in their fifties, Mr. Passet underlines how much the experience, networks, skills, knowledge, the habits they acquired in large companies is profitable to young start-up that would have been in trouble to acquire them in a uberised world.

Mr. Passet also embarked in a praise of the wage system in a very interesting text http://www.uberisation.org/fr/portfolio/Les-4-formes-de-la-fuite-salariale-lub%C3%A9risation-en-t%C3%AAte which an excerpt: ' '. Generalization of wage-earning pushed back all work “at the task”, archaic forms of employment relationship, under paid, under organized and under insured. It allowed also to roll back unpaid jobs unpaid in farms , in trade in particular,  and many women providing essential tasks without special status and right to retirement. Finally, it allowed to monetize a portion of domestic tasks by outsourcing. One of the main cause of the post-war growth has been the eradication of “black or grey “ work by wage work, inserted into the economic circuit and greatly expanding the base of opportunities. ».

The ultra-liberal horizon - egality in insecurity

Listening to Mr. Landier, it seems that these economists who have never worked in a business do not know how it works, and that the only future they offer is more equal, yes, but equal in poverty and de-skilling,  in brief the contrary of a knowledge-based society and a highly qualified industry. However, he mentioned an interesting data: unemployment among young people is distributed very unequally and hits little graduates and very massively non-graduates; and those ones  are  not employed or employable by companies like Uber. The Uberisation is not a solution to unemployment; it comes more from the failure of the french education system and learning. The youth unemployment figures are the subject of recurring manipulations for blaming employees and get them to consent to the sacrifices for "the youth"; in fact , the high unemployment figure is calculated only for young people without education and does not include those who are studying.

Another note: new technologies, computer science, automation... Twenty years ago, the first reaction was: ' super, we will be able to reduce working time. Today is "help, my job is threatened." As would say Houellebecq, something went wrong! We would like to know what, and this has not been discussed: explosion of inequality, confiscation of the productivity gains by a small minority, financiarization of the economy at the expense of industries?

Realities and myths of the pseudo-independent jobs

Philippe Askenazy challenged the increase in self-employed jobs Uber type, noting that there was no such rise in the US, where the economy has recovered and unemployment almost reduced to a minimum level. For him, the development of this type of allegedly independent employment is linked to the deep crisis and unemployment in some European countries, including France, and not due to a genuine appetite for those jobs. He also stressed that the contracts of employment and the way in which they are legally qualified depend on legislation of each country and particularly the notion of subordination, linked to the employment contract; in some countries, the actual subordination (a single payer, no real possibility to organize and to refuse contracts...) Uber type contracts type would qualify as salaried jobs, in others not. Thus, the number of Uber type contracts depends on an important legislative bias. He also remarked that these pseudo self-employment also respond to a certain ideology that well would see the abolition of employers; in the absence of boss, no employer responsibilities (only royalties !) and in the absence of employees, no wage claims. Miracle !. The evaporation of bosses, a true ultra – liberal dream ?

In addition, the attrition of the salary base reduces the corrective capacity of  taxation and social protection, placing them in a financial constraint. Über jobs do not contribute to social security, they kill it; they do not contribute to taxation, yet they benefit from the infrastructure and the organisation of society. These forms of work create of significant leakage into the economic circuit, and high opacity in the identification of value creation (Olivier Passet). The sustainability of our social insurance system, health, unemployment etc. is highly threatened, and  as Philippe Askenazy stressed,  we should not be surprised that the lobby of private insurance pushes very strongly to the development of these false self-employment and defends a legislative and fiscal framework that is supportive.

Monique Dagnaud , sociologist and member of the Haut Conseil de l’Audiovisuel from 1991 to 1999, specialist of rave parties, conducted a survey which showed the immense happiness of these young people, often graduates,  to create their own non-salaried job, boss of their own start-ups (possibly several) and multi-consultants in various structures. It is to wonder if she has not abused of substances too present in raves and if she has not confused speech of self-justification or reinsurance with reality; because it seems to me that for many, they would have preferred a recruitment in the research services of a large company, which would have allowed them to focus in their activity instead of frantically seek financing and this would  have been a better benefit for them, for the development of a knowledge-based society, much talked about and everyday farther.

What is a company?

It is also quite strange that a sociologist  no more raises the question of the characterization of a company. Back to the founder of the discipline, Auguste Comte, one might be surprised by these sociologists who "much exaggerate the importance of the individual and ignore “collective beings” as representing anything real”. From a positivist standpoint, one could characterize a company as a collective being whose goal is to achieve the best, most effective possible reconciliation between two trends always growing and complementary, the specialization of functions and the coordination of efforts; and to promote cooperation of individuals. Then the question arises: can the Uber type job  organization accomplish these tasks better than a  company and its employees? I do not believe.

The positivist origins of secularism (laïcité) "à la française" : God is no more public concern

The excellent Quebec periodics Argument published this month (January 2016) on its website an article about secularism and positivism that I submitted  them.  Thanks to them!

http://www.revueargument.ca/article/2016-01-06/658-les-origines-positivistes-de-la-laicite-a-la-francaise--dieu-nest-plus-dordre-public.html

Summary of main points:

 

Québec and Canada have, like many other countries, to deal with the issue of secularism, from reasonable accommodation to unacceptable concessions.  Everywhere,  in France also there is this debate  between Liberals supporting  a  more 'open', more 'modern' secularism, supporters of traditional secularism "à la française" and "uncompromising" Republicans and tenants of the anglo-saxon multiculturalism

According to positivist conception of secularism, secularism is the result of an evolution of mentalities and societies under the law of the three states (Theology, metaphysics, positivist or scientific)

Positivism lays down the principle of a universal evolution of civilization ; inevitably facing not only the results but the methods of modern science, all civilizations will evolve towards a form of secularism.

The separation of the churches and the State (God is no more public concern, but only private matter)) is only one aspect of a more general principle, that of the separation of temporal and spiritual authorities (who acts on opinion), principle which is the real base of freedom - the real anti-totalitarian principle

The theological public order, destroyed, should be replaced; Positivists insist on  the definition and the teaching of a secular morality, which  they think superior to theological morals, for its effectiveness, and also because that man does not do good for fear of divine punishment, but by education and the altruistic feelings culture: "Man is a citizen of  Earth, not Heaven " (Pierre Laffitte) f

For individuals, positivist secularism fulfils the promise of emancipation from the Cartesianism and the Enlightemnts.  It allows the crossing of the great gap, following the word of Auguste Comte, between  “slaves of God  and servants of Humanity”

No society, wrote Auguste Comte,  can live without a "common social doctrine": "In a population where the necessary involvement of individuals in public order can no longer be determined by the moral, voluntary consent granted by everyone to a common social doctrine, the only remaining  expedient,  to maintain  harmony, is the sad alternative of force or corruption”. Secularism is therefore at the heart of the common social doctrine of the Republic, it is not negotiable, and in this sense the secular State is not neutral: it can process the same way doctrines that accept and those who reject secularism, and a number of other related values (such equality of rights between religions, sex, race, sexual orientation, freedom of expression, including blasphemy, freedom of apostasy...) Freedom of expression must be respected, but certainly some  behaviours contrary to our common social doctrine,  and, of course,  threats, pressures, not to mention violence are not tolerable. It is the role of the polticians  to determine empirically if accommodations are desirable and useful, but they can only be very temporary and very limited; in the France of Jules Ferry, they were limited to sometimes wait for the rehabilitation of the classes to remove the crucifix, recently reminded Mona Ozouf

http://www.revueargument.ca/article/2016-01-06/658-les-origines-positivistes-de-la-laicite-a-la-francaise--dieu-nest-plus-dordre-public.html

Islam, Islamism: a positivist view

What happened?

 After the  terrorrists attack in Paris in January and November 2015, we need, beyond normal stunning, a reflection on islam. What has happened? (this referring of course to the very useful book of Bernard Lewis, who already pointed  the divorce between Islamic civilization and the mind of modernity, especially of modern science).

Here is a possible positivist analysis. There are laws of evolution of societies (law of the three states from Auguste Comte, etc), as there are physical, chemical, biological laws. In Islamic civilization, these laws, at least in three critical moments, have not been followed.

In the seventh century, the Arab world has  transitioned directly from fetishism (or animism, for example adoration of the Kaaba) to monotheism, without going through the intermediate stages of the Egyptian and Greco-Roman type polytheisms (sacerdotal, then military supremacy). The result is a monotheism imported ( from Jews and Christians) in a society and minds that were not prepared by an endogenous evolution, an incomplete monotheism, which has not set up the separation of spiritual and temporal, and practice more than other religions that have evolved differently, the conversion by conquest.

During the 20th century, Arab-Muslim civilization has tried to transition from the theocratic state to a positive, industrial, secular state, all still under imported influences, without the necessary preparation by what Auguste Comte calls the “critical phase”, i.e. without having assimilated the ideas of freedom of thought, sovereignty of the people and equality to dissolve respectively the religious, political and social theocratic order. This resulted in great disorders and inept or unbearable dictatorships.

Finally, the Arab-Muslim civilization was faced to the results of Western science and its technical powers, without the necessary preparation of the scientific  mind and of the scientific method.

Positivist laws of evolution of societies may thus not be ignored without causing immense chaos and regression. There may not be "democracy building", "civilization building" without an internal sociological development.

What to do? Malala.

Posing the problem, positivism proposes a possible solution. It is through training to the scientific mentality and the understanding of the methods and results of the major sciences, that a  beneficial evolution may occur. More there will be Muslims studying science, more there will be  Muslims engineers, scholars, more  Islamic fanaticism and  theocratic violence will vanish. The West can (and must) help this evolution, it cannot replace it.

Sounds naive? Then listen to the formidable Malala, the  Pakistani girl seriously wounded by Muslim fundamentalists because she braved their ban to go to school, no doubt one of the most deserved Nobel Prize for Peace , and also one of the  more poignant speech :

"Education is one of the blessings of life — and one of its necessities. It has been my experience during the 17-year life expectancy. In my house in the Valley of Swat, in the North of Pakistan, I have always loved school and learning new things. I remember when my friends and I were painting our hands with henna for special occasions. Instead of drawing flowers and other models, we painted our hands with mathematical equations and formulas. »

And Malala to call the US to stop drone attacks in the border regions of Pakistan and clarify: "I want education for the sons and daughters of all the terrorists."

Then, from a spiritual and theoretical point of view, Michel Onfray is right to call to stop military interventions in Muslim countries. You do not build colleges and schools under the bombs, on the contrary; but political temporal power has its own obligations and practical constraints ; it is his honor and his servitude, which remain still separate in part from the spiritual realm ; in certain cases, there is no way than to destroy him who defined himself as  your enemy, before he destroys you.

Any thoughts cannot ignore the pain of the victims and their loved ones. For a positivist, victims join subjective immortality ( all convergent humans, past and to come) and their memory will remain. Newspapers that have begun to publish their portraits do well. The terrorists, they will know neither hell nor paradise; having lived as enemy of humanity, they will be forgotten by humanity. A good measure would be to mention their names the least possible, if not by a generic name - Islamist terrorists. Moreover, it would have the merit of not to stigmatize their families.

"Islam has been the great second attempt after Catholicism, to establish the unity of the human race. Islam was an attempt to build unity of the human race on both religious, political, military and economic grounds.  In this respect, its action must appear  less universal than Catholicism, because islam was more about the reality and not merely a moral improvement plan to win the sky. Thus, there is in islam a whole system of social and moral property organization. Instead of merely, like Catholicism, to engage more or less vaguely to a more or less charitable use of wealth, islam is everywhere where it prevails a property organization which prescribes legal duties as much as moral. But the establishment of a such a system necessarily implies the conquest, because it cannot settle by persuasion only. » Pierre Laffitte, Auguste Comte main disciple, on separation between temporal and spiritual in Islam.

 

What scientists fear

"Now, we are all sons of whores", such has been the reaction of the American physicist Kenneth Bainbridge attending the first nuclear firing. On the occasion of the 70^th anniversary of Hiroshima, Le Monde (7 August 2015) has asked researchers from different disciplines: "in your discipline, do you feel that researchers might have the same feeling?”

Robots killers and crash of cybersecurity

This theme is the order of the day in robotics with an open letter signed by 18000 researchers requesting the ban on autonomous weapons capable to select and combat targets without human intervention.  It was one of the signatories of this petition, the Nobel Laureate Frank Wilczek who replied and confirmed his fear of killer robots: "We are at a time where we are witnessing a convergence of different technologies : big data, machine learning, robotics and the internet". He  considers that the application of these technologies to war could lead to weapons  capable of reacting independently much faster that any human could, and  trigger a new weapon race and an uncontrollable situation: "when arrays of machines will obey to secret algorithms, no one can predict the outcome of a conflict and the impact on the civilian world.

Yes, but oddly, it seems to me that there is also in this a campaign promoting roboticians: "We are the most dangerous”. However, this threat has long been identified since it was theme of the famous Kubrick movie  Dr. Strangelove ; the disaster occurs because the Russians have adopted an automatic response system (the Infernal Machine) - a scenario inspired by the mathematicians working on the theory of games, particularly Von Neumann.

Michele Mosca (cryptographer) points the danger of cyber attacks of a new genre that would be allowed by the capabilities of code-breakers quantum computers. «Not only a vast amount of private information (health, financial situation) would lose their confidentiality, but global and critical systems would be annihilated: the global financial system could be paralyzed, energy infrastructures would become vulnerable, one could imagine air and rail crashes...» In cybersecurity circles, , people say that there will be a cyberequivalent of Pearl Harbor. "These dangers are preventable, said Mrs Mosca, but it is essential that individuals express their desire for cybersecurity and compel Governments, public bodies and private organisations to worry.

Editions of gene, screening and Super-viruses

Curiously, biologists, for the most part, seems optimistic and without much fear for their disciplines. Dr. François Jacquemard, who directs the Center for prenatal diagnosis of the American Hospital in Paris, claims that the DNA technology advances allow much safer prenatal diagnostics, make them available much more widely for the benefit of patients and the disappointment of the Cassandras. «We should  not restrict access to new opportunities to improve health, our common good»,. Simply health authorities have to do their job of evaluation and resist pressure from industrialists to put everything to market as fast as possible. We can  «bet on intelligence and humanism and free initiative».

 Emmanuelle Charpentier co-decouvreuse of a highly promising, precise and efficient  gene edition technique ( sounds better than genetic modification !) (CRISPR-Cas9) merely stated that "new discoveries are always accompanied by new responsibilities", but that the benefits of the edition of genes for scientific research and human health are extremely important. However, using clinical manipulation of the germinal line in humans (i.e. cloning to treat, or hereditary improve an individual's genome) "could be very problematic, and this issue is currently at the centre of an ethical debate”. No cloning panic, then ! Only the virologist Wayne Hobson expressed a real fear: that genetic engineering is used to make microbes or viruses, most dangerous, most deadly or more transferable: "the world of microbes is sufficiently dangerous. There is need to add. In some laboratories, these handling were made, with success, to make e.g. transmissible to humans a virus of avian flu". The scientific community has responded by asking that such research should not be published and subject of a moratorium or even a ban.

Memory manipulation

In short, a very good idea as this survey of Le Monde, and as now, too often in the press, a very good idea spolied by haste and lack of resources. It deserved much better than these few platitudes, more in-depth discussions, more stakeholders, exchanges, reflections, more space and time  - a missed opportunity for scientists to interact with the public and to publicize their hopes and their concerns.

To conclude, my own fear: manipulation of memory. We know now to identify the memory trace in the brain left by an event, and can manipulate this memory. Thus, at the MIT, Tonegawa et al., awakening the memory of a painful stimulus tied to a specific place through an optical fiber, have managed to link it to another location; the mice  then manifested their fear when placed in a neutral or even nice location, where they had suffered no pain.. In  CNRS, Benchenane et al. have managed to block the registration of a painful memory and, at the same time stimulating a brain region linked pleasure, have changed the memory associated with the place: instead of avoiding the place wehre they had received painful stimuli,  the mice preferred to go there ! Technically, no big gap between mouse and man...

Last note: for a positivist, any change is not a progress. It is a progress only if is the development of the order (Auguste Comte) , i.e. if it comforts natural evolution.  If it allows an increase of knowledge, leads towards a more efficient, intelligent and moral world, if it confirms the evolution of our societies out  of the theological and metaphysical stages (military and revolutionary) towards a positive, industrious, peaceful age, if it helps the evolution towards  better and more extensive cooperation on a human scale, in connection with greater specialization of functions.  Obviously, research on super contagious and more deadly viruses does not meet this condition.

Heidegger – you can do without

Heidegger "enframed".

Reread a Mandioso Forum in Le Monde(September 26, 2014) on the Heidegger case. It seems that the French intelligentsia wakes up by pretending to discover anti-Semitism and the proximity of Heideggr with  Nazism, apparently carefully hidden by very complacent translators; but points out Mandioso, the main problem is that Heidegger has not anything interesting to say on the modern world, for his ignorance of science is so profound. Quotes:

"The main problem is obviously that the philosophy of Heidegger is made largely of language games and turns to extreme poverty; behind the heidegerrien jargon, its sparse poetic quotations and his fanciful etymologies which derive German from Greeks, there is not much serious in lla this”

«Industrial farming rooms, gas and nuclear plants are the inevitable consequence of an initial unveiling, for such is the fate of the man "organized technically," who gave up Being ' (this is the famous " enframing"). “Technology is the contrary  of the destiny of man man - "be the guardian of Being".

The success of Heidegger explains in a straightforward manner: «it flatters the intellectual laziness that allows the philosopher neglecting whole sections of reality, to devote himself to the meditation of the great texts, philosophy thus being limited to an exercise of autojustification”

Add the revelation of the "Black Books" which have just been published. (cf France Culture,, Heidegger et l ' antisémitisme, 17 oct 14): only Germans manage to conquer the essence of the theoria, in which they are the sole heirs of the Greeks; On the contrary, the Jews express fully in gifts for calculation, in the technique which uproots and deterritorialize, while the philosophy of Heidegger enhances the romanticism of blood and soil,

 My positivist preference

Sorry, but if it comes to think about science and technology, I prefer and find safer and more interesting my dear positivists.

"Science does not think" dixit Heidegger, it depoetizes the world and destroys the Being

This, more than 50 years before, of the positivist Bridges:

"It is clear that in the invention of a hypothesis, the highest faculties of imagination are brought into play. No one doubts that Kepler and Archimedes were endowed with imaginative and also powerful forces as those of Aeschylus or Milton. And in this mental process, not only the imagination, but the most noble affects of man, thought Comte, are also active. »

On racism and essentialization of Germans and Jews:

«It is certainly one of the most strange inventions of the current literature to support that there are ideas that are characteristic of races «(Pierre Laffitte)

"We do not belong to a race, but to a civilization established by twenty different peoples... Apart from the major known divisions - the white, the yellow, the black -, races, physiological races, do not exist. There are  sociological races. For my account, I am not of Celtic race, despite the structure of my name. I am of a civilization of Hellenism, of Romanism and finally of Europeanism” (Lavertujon)

Thinking against the Enlightments, against Science, against Technique and  for the mysticism of the soil and blood could  only lead Heidegger to the confines of Nazism, predispose him to serve as instrument of the nazis, what he did, and without never, even after the war, even despite the exhortations of subjugated disciples such as Jonas or Arendt, never express any remorse.

There is also a disturbing disregard for democracy, that he transmitted to Hans Jonas, the father of the “Imperative of Responsibility”, and partially, of the “principe de précaution”. Read Hans Jonas violently criticizing democracy, unable to take into account the fate of future generations, and to congratulate the former USSR (that of Brezhnev)  for being able to impose on its people a blessed frugality, asceticism and other sacrifices ; and to oppose to a condemnable society of abundance. And also hear him call to "heuristics of fear», to renounce to reason,  discussion,  demonstration to convince and to replace all of this with fear; and also to substitute divine inspiration for science.

We are far from the attachment of the positivists to popular education, the alliance of the proletarians, scholars and philosophers, for physical, mental, spiritual progress.

No, whether he was a little, much, passionately nazi, there is nothing to save in Heidegger. and if we wish seriously to think about  science and technology, we have to look elsewhere