angiEmedia

Illumina Corporation, a San Diego biotech firm, on June 16, 2009, announced the advent of relatively low-cost personal full DNA sequencing. For the low price of $48,000, you can have your entire DNA sequenced for use in detecting genetic diseases. Someday, that data may be useful for creating gene therapies and custom drugs to improve your health. $48,000 might sound like a lot of money, but it is really a bargain. Until this month, Illumina charged $96,000 for the same service.

Just several years ago, it cost billions of dollars and many years of work to get the same information. Consider the Human Genome Project to see how it took 13+ years and $3+ billion to sequence 92% of the human genome for the first time. Celera Genomics, founded by Craig Venter, developed shotgun DNA sequencing technology that brought down full DNA genome sequencing to $300 million and a few years, and companies like Illumina have improved and cost-reduced the technologies even further.
Read more…

While looking for updates on the Kate Hopkins child custody trial in Tennessee, I ran across an interesting website by a father in Georgia. He’s living near the area of Tennessee in which the Kate Hopkins trial is being held, as he mentions in this post.

His website is called F.R.A.M.E.D. which is short for Family Rights and Many Ending Discrimination. It appears he was victimized by the family law courts much as many fathers are. Originally, he was focused on “men ending discrimination” but over time has realized that it’s not just fathers but many parents and children who are harmed by the family law courts. Here’s his story in his own words as quoted from his website:
Read more…

Recent studies of divorced children in Australia, Canada, and the United States have shown the devastating consequences of divorce and family chaos on children’s education. Australian students appear to be more adversely impacted than those in the US and Canada. Divorce is also more disruptive than death of a parent. Multiple divorces worsen outcomes even further, dropping high school graduation rates to 40% or less.
Read more…

In her book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, author Naomi Klein unveils her opinions on the perhaps not so surprising tactic of abusive governments everywhere: the use of coups, regime changes, and disasters to push radical agendas that could not be pursued during normal circumstances. She coins the phrase “disaster capitalism” to refer to this pattern of destruction or distraction paired with policies designed to transfer power or wealth to corporations.

Klein cites examples from regions and disasters across the world, including the United States and the 9/11/2001 terror attacks, the Southeast Asian tsunami, and the Hurricane Katrina destruction of New Orleans. She also covers examples of economic disasters created by government changes in countries all over the world, including Argentina, Chile, Poland, Russia, and China. Throughout her book, she lays the blame for nearly all of these messes used to spread bad government policies on economist Milton Friedman and his theories.
Read more…

A group of US lawmakers has proposed the Parental Rights Amendment to the US Constitution to guarantee that parents will not lose their rights of being involved in their children’s lives and being able to make choices regarding their education, healthcare, and other decisions traditionally made by parents. They and the supporters of this amendment believe that it is necessary as the US Supreme Court has recently been rejecting enforcement of traditional parent rights interpretations, citing that there is no language in the Constitution that specifies parents have any rights.

Furthermore, the United Nations is increasingly involved in treaties and agencies that define the rights of children and parents. Some in the US government, including President Obama, appear to intend to discard US sovereignty for matters involving parents and children by ratifying the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child that is controlled by a group of unelected and unaccountable United Nations experts. This treaty essentially would give the United Nations and thereby the US government the right to do whatever it wants “in the best interests of the children” even if the parents are opposed.
Read more…

The “Elkins Task Force” has been set up to help correct problems in the family law courts in California.

The next Elkins Family Law Task Force meeting is on Monday, April 6, 2009, at the Judicial Council Conference Center of the Administrative Office of the Courts in San Francisco. It is scheduled for 10:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. at:

Administrative Office of the Courts
455 Golden Gate Avenue
Milton Marks Auditorium, Lower Level
San Francisco, California 94102

Read more…

Toni Valentin, mother of a 5-year-old daughter, was unhappy with the child custody arrangement she had with her ex-husband. On February 17, 2009, she and her boyfriend Dante Quezada allegedly took the daughter to her father’s brother’s home in the 300 block of West 47th Street in Los Angeles, where she believed the father was located at the time, in a minivan allegedly driven by their friend Felipe Carias. Quezada then allegedly proceeded to shoot out the windows of the home with a semi-automatic pistol, in the process shooting the daughter’s 7-year-old cousin in the chest and arm as she was doing her homework. Apparently they were hoping to kill the 5-year-old’s father while she watched. Fortunately, her cousin is expected to fully recover.
Read more…

Child sexual abuse is a serious allegation, often destroying the lives of those accused even when they not convicted. The trauma of the investigation often damages the children, too. In the case of children who were not abused, the investigation can be far more abusive than anything that really did happen to them. Yet apparently the government of Santa Clara County behaves as if child sexual abuse allegations warrant hiding evidence to prevent a defense and possibly bullying children into getting the testimony the police and DA want for their cases.

Read more…

PC Kidnappers
by K. L. Billingsley

originally published in Heterodoxy: Articles and Animadversions on Political Correctness and Other Follies, Volume 1, No. 8, January 1993

[click here to see original newsletter version]

On the morning of May 9, 1989, eight-year-old Alicia Wade awoke complaining of pain deep in her midsection. Her father, 37-year-old Navy enlisted man James Wade, and her mother Denise, took the girl to the NAVCARE facility in San Diego, where initially she either couldn’t or wouldn’t explain what happened. The doctor found that the child’s anal and vaginal regions had been torn in a sexual attack and would need to be surgically repaired. When informed of this, both parents showed great distress and began to weep uncontrollably. The NAVCARE doctor immediately called the local Child Protection Services.

CPS immediately suspected family involvement for two reasons: the rapist, they believed, had not removed the child from her room, and Alicia did not immediately complain of pain. The CPS worker interpreted the hours the Wades had spent at NAVCARE as a delay in reporting the crime, and thus an additional sign of guilt.

Though shaken by what had happened to their daughter and also by the hints of accusation they felt coming from authorities, the Wades cooperated fully in an interview with CPS. They could not hide the fact that they were overweight, which child welfare authorities often take as evidence of general neglect. They did not hide the fact that Denise Wade had been molested as a child and that James was a recovering alcoholic who twice blacked out while drinking in foreign ports. They did not know that they were waving “red flags” that further substantiated suspicions toward family involvement in the crime. They had no idea that authorities were already beginning to build a case against them and were taking particular aim at James Wade, who was a walking bull’s-eye because he was a white middle-aged male and a serviceman in addition to his other defects.

The Wades were more interested in the facts. During an evidentiary exam at the Center for Child Protection, their daughter Alicia calmly told the physician that a man came through the window, claimed to be her “uncle”, took her out in a green car and “hurt” her. They would have had a better notion of the ordeal ahead of them if they had known that on the space on the medical form for “chief complaint in the child’s own words”, the examining doctor ignored Alicia’s testimony and wrote only that the child showed “total denial”.

Read more…