DRUG WAR KILLS TRANSPLANT PATIENT
Criteria for organ transplant system denies medical marijuana users access

SEATTLE — In America’s northwest corner, a 56-year-old man died May 2 after being refused a liver transplant because he had followed his doctor’s recommendation to use marijuana to ease the symptoms of hepatitis C. 

From the Associated Press: “His death came a week after a doctor told him a University of Washington Medical Center committee had again denied him a spot on the liver transplant list. The team had previously told him it would not consider placing him on the list until he completed a 60-day drug-treatment class.”

The Virginia-based United Network for Organ Sharing, which oversees the nation’s transplant system, leaves it to individual hospitals to develop criteria for transplant candidates. For some, people who use “illicit substances” — including medical marijuana, even in the dozen states that allow it — are automatically rejected. At others, patients are given a chance to reapply if they stay clean for six months.


College civil engineer receives government response to three World Trade Center collapses

SALT LAKE CITY — Seventeen months ago, Brigham Young University and Steven Jones parted ways, but Jones said in early May that he isn’t bitter about the academic divorce.

He certainly hasn’t curtailed his volatile research on the collapse of the three World Trade Center towers after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. (Yes, three towers fell, not just two. If you didn’t know that, Jones is particularly interested in reaching you with his message that some other group, in addition to al-Qaida, likely contributed to the collapses.)

In fact, Jones is the lead author of a paper on the collapses published April 18 in a civil engineering journal.

The journal article does not list his past tie to BYU, and that’s a big mission accomplished for university leaders, who felt they acted to protect BYU’s reputation when they worked out a retirement package with Jones and he left at the end of 2006.

Most importantly, he is preparing several more papers that, if they pass peer review and are published, will give him the peace of mind that his case reached the public.

Jones was energized in November when he and others received a response from the national lab charged by Congress to determine why and how the towers collapsed. The letter contained the following phrase: “We are unable to provide a full explanation of the total collapse.”

“That,” Jones said, “really was progress. It made me believe we could talk with them.”

It is striking. After producing a 10,000-page report, the National Institute of Standards and Technology can’t explain the collapse. And on its website, NIST clearly states that nowhere in its report did it say that steel in the Twin Towers melted due to fires. In fact, the fires reached only 1,000 degrees Celsius. 

Steel melts at 1,500 degrees Celsius.


Raygun tested on fake protesters

Moody Air Force Base, Georgia — The Pentagon has been developing a raygun, which can harmlessly repel enemies by causing a burning sensation in the top layer of the skin. However, according to CBS’ 60 Minutes, the military is unwilling to actually trust this weapon enough to deploy it in Iraq.

“We are now stepping into the Buck Rogers scenario,” explained Colonel Kirk Hymes, who is in charge of testing the “Active Denial System” at Moody Air Force Base in Georgia.

Hymes demonstrated the weapon by staging what CBS somewhat oddly called “a scenario soldiers might encounter in Iraq.” This is a handful of military volunteers, dressed as civilian protesters, who carried signs reading “peace not war” and threw objects at a small group of soldiers. A series of raygun blasts from half a mile away disrupted their chants and finally sent them running.

Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, Sue Payton, calls the Active Denial System a “huge game-changer” that “would save huge numbers of lives.” She told CBS, “It could be used to read someone’s mind, in effect. ... If they continue to come at you, then you’re fairly sure ... they’re probably a terrorist or an adversary who wants to do you harm.”

The Active Denial System was developed in secret for 10 years before being unveiled by the Pentagon in 2001. As of 2004, it was being described as ready for use in Iraq within the next 12 months. This has still not occurred, and according to Secretary Payton, use of the weapon in Iraq is now “not politically tenable” because after Abu Ghraib “you don’t ever, ever, ever want a system like this to be thought of as a torture weapon.”

However, the failure to deploy the weapon as planned has raised suspicions that the real intention is to use it for domestic crowd control.


Academic gets silenced for study of ‘terrorist’ acts

NOTTINGHAM, ENGLAND — A masters student researching terrorist tactics — who was arrested and detained for six days after his university informed police about al-Qaida-related material he downloaded — has spoken of the “psychological torture” he endured in custody.

Despite his Nottingham University supervisors insisting the materials were directly relevant to his research, Rizwaan Sabir, 22, was held for nearly a week under the Terrorism Act, accused of downloading the materials for illegal use. The student had obtained a copy of the al-Qaida training manual from a U.S. government website for his research into terrorist tactics.

The case highlights what lecturers are claiming is a direct assault on academic freedom led by the government which, in its attempt to establish a “prevent agenda” against terrorist activity, is putting pressure on academics to become police informers.

Sabir was arrested on May 14 after the document was found by a university staff member on an administrator’s computer. The administrator, Hisham Yezza, an acquaintance of Sabir, had been asked by the student to print the 1,500-page document because Sabir could not afford the printing fees. The pair were arrested under the Terrorism Act, Sabir’s family home was searched and their computer and mobile phones were seized. They were released uncharged six days later but Yezza, who is Algerian, was immediately rearrested on unrelated immigration charges and now faces deportation.

Dr. Alf Nilsen, a research fellow at the university’s school of politics and international relations, said that Yezza is being held at Colnbrook immigration removal centre, due to be deported. 

“If he is taken to Algeria, he may be subjected to severe human rights violations after his involvement in this case. He has been in the UK for 13 years. His work is here, his friends are here, his life is here.”