Meanwhile, the new British Prime Minister, conservative David Cameron, told the Telegraph that torture was wrong and that Bush administration detainee policy had done harm, rather than good.

"Look, I think torture is wrong and I think we ought to be very clear about that," Mr Cameron said. "And I think we should also be clear that if actually you're getting information from torture, it's very likely to be unreliable information."

When pressed on whether torture saves lives, he added: "I think there is both a moral reason for being opposed to torture -- and Britain doesn't sanction torture -- but secondly I think there's also an effectiveness thing ... if you look at the effect of Guantánamo Bay and other things like that, long-term that has actually helped to radicalise people and make our country and our world less safe. So I don't agree."

There may be little point in speculating on what drove Cheney and Bush to cross such a clear and important ethical line. Was it that they were well and truly terrified? Did they succumb to the lures of the ticking time bomb-fallacy so popular on TV -- and among the supremely confident? Some social psychologists have speculated that the real motivation for torture is retribution.

It was the Senate Armed Services Committee, in April 2009, that actually suggested an even more nefarious possible motive: That the White House started pushing the use of torture not out of concern about an imminent threat, but when officials in 2002 were desperately casting about for ways to tie Iraq to the 9/11 attacks in order to strengthen their public case for invasion.

That becomes less incredible when you consider that it was a false confession extracted under torture by Egyptian authorities from Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, a terror suspect who had been rendered to Egypt by the CIA, that was the sole source for arguments Bush made in a key pre-Iraq war speech in October 2002.

"We've learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases," Bush said at the time -- with no caveats. The same false confession provided a critical part of then-secretary of state Colin Powell's famous presentation to the United Nations, a month before the invasion.

Finally, it's hugely important to remember that Bush's embrace of torture went far beyond the waterboard. For Bush, the best-case scenario is that the debate remains about his approval of the use of that one procedure on three top terror suspects.

But Bush's legacy is one of much more wanton and widespread cruelty -- a cruelty that was truly unimaginable before the unique combination of 9/11 and some particularly cold-blooded people occupying high office.

Bush and his helpers approved a wide range of other brutal interrogation practices, including severe beatings, painful stress positions, severe sleep deprivation, exposure to extreme cold and hot temperatures, forced nudity, threats, hooding, the use of dogs and sensory deprivation -- many of which, it turned out, were cribbed from techniques Chinese Communists perfected to extract confessions from captured U.S. servicemen.

Some of these tactics fall short of the legal definition of torture, some don't, but they are all, as former Navy general counsel Alberto Mora explained in 2008, morally indefensible:

Many Americans are unaware that there is a legal distinction between cruelty and torture, cruelty being the less severe level of abuse. This has tended to obscure important elements of the interrogation debate from the public's attention. For example, the public may be largely unaware that the government could evasively if truthfully claim (and did claim) that it was not "torturing" even as it was simultaneously interrogating detainees cruelly. Yet there is little or no moral distinction between cruelty and torture, for cruelty can be as effective as torture in savaging human flesh and spirit and in violating human dignity. Our efforts should be focused not merely on banning torture, but on banning cruelty.

Tactics that violated basic human dignity were not limited to three men, or even to the three dozen men subjected to "enhanced interrogation" at the CIA's black sites in Poland, Thailand, and Romania. They were employed as a matter of standard practice on countless detainees held in custody in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay.

And once cruelty was adopted as a weapon of war, that inevitably opened the door wide to abusive and degrading practices that weren't explicitly authorized.

Far from being limited to ostensibly "high value" detainees, state-sanctioned cruelty was applied willy-nilly to many of those unfortunate enough to get swept up into the system. We literally have no idea how many.

As a bipartisan Senate report in 2008 concluded:

The abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 was not simply the result of a few soldiers acting on their own. Interrogation techniques such as stripping detainees of their clothes, placing them in stress positions, and using military working dogs to intimidate them appeared in Iraq only after they had been approved for use in Afghanistan and at [Guantanamo]. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's December 2, 2002, authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques and subsequent interrogation policies and plans approved by senior military and civilian officials conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees in U.S. military custody. What followed was an erosion in standards dictating that detainees be treated humanely.

The report laid out a clear line of responsibility for Abu Ghraib that started with Bush and his February 2002 memo exempting war-on-terror detainees from the Geneva Conventions.

Mora, one of the few voices of conscience inside the government during that dark period, summed up the damage this way:

[O]ur Nation's policy decision to use so-called "harsh" interrogation techniques during the War on Terror was a mistake of massive proportions. It damaged and continues to damage our Nation in ways that appear never to have been considered or imagined by its architects and supporters, whose policy focus seems to have been narrowly confined to the four corners of the interrogation room. This interrogation policy -- which may aptly be labeled a "policy of cruelty" -- violated our founding values, our constitutional system and the fabric of our laws, our over-arching foreign policy interests, and our national security. The net effect of this policy of cruelty has been to weaken our defenses, not to strengthen them, and has been greatly contrary to our national interest.

George W. Bush has managed to duck the ignominy he deserves for launching this policy of cruelty. He has done so in part by framing the debate as one solely about waterboarding -- and counting on a lazy, amnesiac press corps to neither confront him on that count nor call him out for the wider moral breach for which he is responsible.

Back in 2004, as soon as the photos of detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib went public, Bush and his collaborators launched a high-stakes disinformation campaign to prevent the American people from linking the White House to the pervasive, inhumane treatment of detainees -- many of whom were utterly innocent -- at prison facilities such as Abu Ghraib, Bagram, and Guantanamo. Being associated with the waterboarding of three top terrorists was at least a defensible position. Being responsible for widescale violations of the laws of war was not.

That disinformation campaign continues today, in "Decision Points." If we forget what really happened, it just might succeed.

Dan Froomkin is senior Washington correspondent for the Huffington Post. You can send him an e-mail, bookmark his page; subscribe to his RSS feed, follow him on Twitter, friend him on Facebook, and/or become a fan and get e-mail alerts when he writes.

L'approccio all'informazione degli italiani continua a cambiare, andando ad intaccare, anno dopo anno, il peso dei media tradizionali. Sono 25 milioni gli italiani che navigano abitualmente su Internet, e tra i giovani la percentuale di chi usa il mouse sale considerevolmente. Per questa parte di popolazione, la rete rappresenta ormai il luogo dove si vanno a cercare notizie più che in qualsiasi altro, soprattutto quando succedono avvenimenti eccezionali. Motori di ricerca, quotidiani e siti d'informazione on line sono i principali punti di riferimento, ma anche i blog hanno conquistato il loro mercato.

Il fenomeno più rilevante dell'ultimo periodo sembra però quello dei social network e degli aggregatori di notizie. È quanto emerge da una ricerca svolta da Liquida con Human Highway, che analizza in particolare il ruolo dei blog nell'informazione di attualità. Dallo studio emerge che sul totale della popolazione online (24,4 milioni) il 23,1% degli utenti, ovvero 5,6 milioni di individui, sono lettori assidui e consapevoli dei blog, in crescita rispetto al 2009 (+10%).

I blog di informazione in particolare raggiungono 4,9 milioni di persone, ma i lettori assidui di questi siti sono in calo rispetto al 2009 a 1,8 milioni (-30% in un solo anno). Secondo la ricerca, basata su un campione di 829 individui sopra i 18 anni che accede abitualmente alla rete, mezzo milione di individui non si dirigono più in prima battuta sui singoli blog sui quali l'informazione viene prodotta. Si dirigono invece dove questa informazione si riaggrega, come social network, quotidiani online e nuove testate di aggregazione di UGC (cioè di contenuti creati dagli utenti).

Dalla ricerca emerge il peso assunto dall'informazione on line. Tra gli intervistati, il 24,3% legge quotidiani cartacei, il 41,3% quotidiani on line, il 7% legge blog di attualità, il 15,3% non legge né quotidiani né blog. Rispetto alla rilevazione dello scorso anno, inoltre, diminuisce del 3% la popolazione che si informa con una certa frequenza. Interessante è capire quello che fanno gli italiani quando succede un evento eccezionale. Quasi tutti gli intervistati (91%) ricorrono a Internet, il 45% accende la televisione e il 5,8% la radio.

Tra chi va in rete, un peso rilevante ha la ricerca generica (50%), poi i quotidiani online (30%), i siti d'informazione online (25%), Facebook (8%) ed infine blog e Twitter (entrambi intorno al 2%). Nella ricerca, invece, degli argomenti di proprio interesse, cambia il peso dei vari media, ma Internet nel complesso resta in vetta con l'80,1% degli intervistati che vi fa ricorso. La tv è al 42%, i quotidiani cartacei al 13%, le riviste al 10% e la radio al 9%.

La top ten dei blog più noti vede in vetta il sito di Beppe Grillo (conosciuto dal 97% degli intervistati). Segue il blog di Gad Lerner - il blog del bastardo (55%), poi Leonardo (52%), Spinoza (43%), Voglioscendere (38%), Piovono rane (37%), Pandemia (30%), Il Post (30%) Giornalettismo (26%) e Luca De Biase (24%).

Fonte: Sky Tg24

But what Bush did assert in his memoir was equally untrue. Investigative journalist Ron Suskind, in his breakthrough 2006 book, "The One Percent Doctrine," reported that the key information about bin al Shibh's location came not from Zubaydah but from an al-Jazeera reporter who had interviewed bin al Shibh at his apartment in Karachi.

And Zubaydah was not a major player. According to Suskind, he was a mentally ill travel booker who under CIA torture sent investigators chasing after false leads about al Qaeda plots on American nuclear plants, water systems, shopping malls, banks and supermarkets.

Almost three years after Suskind's book came out, the Washington Post confirmed what Suskind had reported: that "not a single significant plot was foiled" as a result of Zubaydah's brutal treatment -- and that his false confessions "triggered a series of alerts and sent hundreds of CIA and FBI investigators scurrying in pursuit of phantoms."

Another detainee waterboarded on Bush's say-so was Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, who stands accused of plotting al Qaeda's bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000.

As far as I can tell, Bush has never actually made any claims about any intelligence whatsoever reaped from Nashiri's brutal treatment at the hands of CIA interrogators in Poland (who, among other things, used a power drill and a handgun to terrify him.)

The unclassified transcript of Nashiri's Combatant Status Review Tribunal hearing in 2007, while redacted to eliminate any mention of the specific ways in which he was tortured, indicates that his response was to tell interrogators whatever they wanted to hear.

Nashiri was asked about his statements about plans to bomb other American ships, about a plot to fly a plane and crash it into a ship, and about bin Laden having a nuclear bomb.

"I just said those things to make the people happy," he explained. "They were very happy when I told them those things."

And then there was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, who the CIA asphyxiated 183 times after Bush so enthusiastically approved his waterboarding. Bush writes:

He disclosed plans to attack American targets with anthrax and directed us to three people involved in the al Qaeda biological weapons program. .He provided information that led to the capture of Hambali, the chief of al Qaeda's most dangerous affiliate in Southeast Asia and the architect of the Bali terrorist attacks that killed 202 people. He provided further details that led agents to Hambali's brother, who had been grooming operatives to carry out another attack inside the United States, possibly a West Coast version of 9/11 in which terrorist flew a hijacked plane into the Library Tower in Los Angeles.

There seems to be little doubt that KSM provided intelligence of some value (along with a number of false confessions) -- although he might have done likewise (minus the false confessions) in the hands of a skilled interrogator using traditional methods.

But despite the lengths that the Bush White House, intelligence officials and various torture apologists have gone to over the past several years to help Bush make his case, there remains not the tiniest shred of evidence to support his assertion that KSM's torture -- or any other -- actually saved a single life.

As far as we know, none of the alleged plots that were allegedly disrupted was anything more than a fantasy. There is no evidence they presented an actual danger. There is not a single saved life they can point to. If they could, they would have.

The first time Bush disclosed what he alleged were thwarted terror plots was in a speech in October 2005. "Overall, the United States and our partners have disrupted at least ten serious al Qaeda terrorist plots since September the 11th, including three al Qaeda plots to attack inside the United States," he said. The White House then distributed what it called a fact sheet.

But a few days later, the Washington Post reported:

Intelligence officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the White House overstated the gravity of the plots by saying that they had been foiled, when most were far from ready to be executed....

The president made it 'sound like well-hatched plans,' said a former CIA official involved in counterterrorism during that period. 'I don't think they fall into that category.'

Similarly, in a February 2006 speech Bush offered more details about that alleged Library Tower plot. The Director of National Intelligence obligingly declassified a Summary of the High Value Terrorist Detainee Program to go along with that. But the Washington Post soon reported that "several U.S. intelligence officials played down the relative importance of the alleged plot and attributed the timing of Bush's speech to politics."

And even when the CIA last year released documents that Cheney had sworn would definitively prove that torture had "prevented the violent death of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent people," those documents turned out to include no such proof -- just a lot more cover-your-ass language from the CIA.

Senator Rockefeller concluded in March 2008:

As Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, I have heard nothing to suggest that information obtained from enhanced interrogation techniques has prevented an imminent terrorist attack. And I have heard nothing that makes me think the information obtained from these techniques could not have been obtained through traditional interrogation methods used by military and law enforcement interrogators. On the other hand, I do know that coercive interrogations can lead detainees to provide false information in order to make the interrogation stop.

Bush's assertion that torture thwarted plots to attack Heathrow Airport and Canary Wharf got some renewed attention earlier this month after portions of his memoir were serialized in the Times of London. The journalists across the pond, at least, pushed back a bit.

The Guardian reported:

British officials said today there was no evidence to support claims by George Bush, the former US president, that information extracted by "waterboarding" saved British lives by foiling attacks on Heathrow airport and Canary Wharf....

British counter-terrorism officials distanced themselves from Bush's claims. They said Mohammed provided "extremely valuable" information which was passed on to security and intelligence agencies, but that it mainly related to al-Qaida's structure and was not known to have been extracted through torture.

The Daily Mail reported:

Lord MacDonald, the former Director of Public Prosecutions, said: 'These stories about waterboarding thwarting attacks on Canary Wharf and Heathrow -- I've never seen anything to substantiate these claims. These claims are to be treated with a great deal of scepticism.'

Now it's true that some British intelligence officials -- notoriously close to their American colleagues -- share Bush's views. The head of Britain's MI5, for instance, actually defended the use of torture on familiar grounds last year:

Al Qaeda had indeed made plans for further attacks after 9/11: details of some of these plans came to light through the interrogation of detainees by other countries, including the US, in the period after 9/11; subsequent investigation on the ground, including in the UK, substantiated these claims. Such intelligence was of the utmost importance to the safety and security of the UK. It has saved British lives. Many attacks have been stopped as a result of effective international intelligence co-operation since 9/11.

But he offered no verifiable details, of course.

TO BE CONTINUED ...

Nu de putine ori, se vorbeste despre intuitia feminina la modul anecdotic, daca nu chiar de-a dreptul ironic. Ce poate sa insume aceasta sintagma? Un fel de al saselea simt, un har la impartirea caruia barbatii au fost discriminati ori poate o calitate absolut naturala? Un raspuns la asemenea dileme „existentiale”, cel mai bine il poate oferi stiinta bazata pe argumente practice, concrete.

 Un fel de magie

Iar cercetarile facute in acest sens in SUA nu numai ca au confirmat existenta a ceea ce putem numi intuitie feminina, ci au relevat si detalii de domeniul senzationalului, ale acesteia. Evident, fortam acum putin nota, dar sa pornim de la o observatie nu prea luata in considerare si deseori chiar neluata in serios: majoritatea covarsitoare a persoanelor care se ocupa de domeniul ocult al ghicitului, al magiei, sunt femei. Cercetatorii americani nu s-au aplecat insa asupra acestor practici foarte dificil de patruns, ci au recurs la un studiu cat se poate de... lumesc. Astfel, au remarcat ca femeile care cauta sa stabileasca o relatie pe termen lung cu un partener prefera barbatii care iubesc copiii.

Nu in modul cel mai banal, punandu-i intrebari mai mult sau mai putin directe, ci folosindu-se de capacitatea de a distinge la ei calitatea respectiva, doar privindu-le fata. „Studiul indica faptul ca femeile disting caracteristici faciale ce se pare ca sunt legate de calitati paterne”, explica psihologul James Roney, de la universitatea din California. „Cu cat ele constata ca un barbat iubeste mai mult copiii, cu atat au tendinta sa stabileasca o relatie de durata cu el.”

„Cobai” pentru studente

Potrivit expertilor, evolutia omului a dotat femeile cu capacitatea de a-i recunoaste pe barbatii doritori sa perpetueze specia intemeindu-si o familie. Studiul amintit, realizat la universitatea din Chicago, a implicat un grup de 39 de barbati tineri, intre 18 si 33 de ani. Fiecaruia i s-au aratat cate zece perechi de fotografii cu persoane reprezentand una un adult si cealalta un sugar si s-a cerut sa arate pe care o prefera.

In acelasi timp, li s-a analizat saliva, pentru determinarea nivelului de testosteron. Apoi, fotografii cu fetele „cobailor” au fost prezentate la 29 de studente de 18 pana la 20 de ani, de la universitatea din Santa Barbara. Tinerelor li s-a cerut sa-i evalueze pe barbati dupa patru criterii: iubeste copiii, are masculinitate, este seducator fizic si e dragut. De asemenea, trebuia sa indice pe care dintre ei i-ar prefera, pentru o relatie scurta sau de durata. Pe ansamblu, studiul a aratat ca femeile au intuit corect care barbati iubeau cel mai mult copiii, iar cei catalogati drept masculini aveau un nivel de testosteron mai ridicat decat ceilalti.

Barbatul – o carte mereu deschisa

Foarte interesant este ca barbatii cu masculinitate mai ridicata au fost considerati de femei drept potentiali parteneri doar pentru o idila de scurta durata, in timp ce aceia atasati de copii au fost preferati pentru o relatie pe termen lung. S-a observat ca principalele caracteristici ale masculinitatii sunt maxilarele puternice si barba stufoasa. In schimb, nu e clar ce detaliu fizic face ca o femeie sa creada ca un barbat iubeste copiii.

O ipoteza a cercetatorilor ar fi ca e vorba despre o fata mai rotunda si mai blanda; alta se refera la anumite expresii faciale. Un „supliment” al studiului a solicitat cinci studente pentru a-i nota pe barbati pe o scara de la 1 la 7, indicand astfel daca acestia aveau un aer suparat sau mai degraba fericit. Concluzia a fost ca cei atrasi de copii aveau o privire mai fericita, mai satisfacuta. „Femeile stiu foarte bine sa foloseasca toate informatiile pe care le pot «citi» pe fata unui barbat. In functie de ceea ce doresc si de perioada vietii prin care trec, ele se folosesc de informatiile respective in mod diferit.” Un adevar etern valabil, pe care, vrand-nevrand, trebuie sa-l recunoastem ca atare!

ADRIAN-NICOLAE POPESCU - magazin.ro

The result back then was that instead of watchdog journalism, what we got was credulous, stenographic recitation of the administration's deeply flawed arguments for war. Or, as formerWashington Post executive editor Len Downie told Howard Kurtz in 2004: In retrospect, "we were so focused on trying to figure out what the administration was doing that we were not giving the same play to people who said it wouldn't be a good idea to go to war and were questioning the administration's rationale."

Today's journalists would like to think they have learned some lessons from their poor pre-war conduct. But letting Bush get away now with saying the exact opposite of what they knew to be true even at the time -- and what has since been amply confirmed by the historical record -- would be yet another major victory of stenography over accountability.

The Embrace Of Torture

That torture is even a subject of debate today is a testament to the devastating effect the Bush administration has had on our concept of morality.

And in his book and on his book tour, far from hanging his head in shame, Bush is more explicit and enthusiastic than ever before endorsing one of torture's iconic forms. "Damn right," he quotes himself as saying in response to a CIA request to waterboard Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. "Had we captured more al Qaeda operatives with significant intelligence value, I would have used the program for them as well."

Bush's two-part argument is simple; That waterboarding was legal (i.e., that it was not really torture); and that it worked.

But neither assertion is remotely true.

Waterboarding -- essentially controlled drowning -- involves immobilizing someone and pouring water over their mouth and nose in a way that makes them choke. It causes great physical and mental suffering, but leaves no marks.

It's not new; villains and despots have been using it extract confessions for something like 700 years. The CIA just perfected it.

It is self-evidently, almost definitionally, torture. The U.S. government had always considered it torture. In 1947, the U.S. charged a Japanese officer who waterboarded an American with war crimes. It is flatly a violation of international torture conventions.

And as far as I know, no American government official had ever even suggested it wasn't torture until a small handful of lawyers in Bush's supine Justice Department, working under orders from the vice president, claimed otherwise.

These lawyers drafted a series of memos so lacking in legal merit -- and so cruel and inhuman -- that they were retracted and repudiated even by a later wave of Bush appointees.

The original "torture memo" from August 1, 2002, for instance, argued that to "rise to the level of torture" an act had to cause pain "equivalent to intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." Anything short of that, according to the memo, was OK.

Lauer asked Bush in their interview why he thought waterboarding was legal.

"Because the lawyer said it was legal," Bush replied. "He said it did not fall within the Anti-Torture Act. I'm not a lawyer, but you gotta trust the judgment of people around you and I do."

When Lauer raised the possibility that Bush's lawyers had simply told him what they knew he wanted to hear, Bush vaguely denied it and suggested that his book might shed more light on the topic. But it doesn't, at least not much. In it, Bush writes:

Department of Justice and CIA lawyers conducted a careful legal review. They concluded that the enhanced interrogation program complied with the Constitution an all applicable laws, including those that ban torture.

I took a look at the list of techniques. There were two that I felt went too far, even if they were legal. I directed the CIA not to use them. Another technique was waterboarding, a process of simulated drowning. No doubt the procedure was tough, but medical experts assured the CIA that it did not lasting harm.

I knew that an interrogation program this sensitive and controversial would one day become public. When it did, we would open ourselves up to criticism that America had compromised our moral values. I would have preferred that we get the information another way. But the choice between security and values was real. Had I not authorized waterboarding on senior al Qaeda leaders, I would have had to accept a greater risk that the country would be attacked. In the wake of 9/11, that was a risk I was unwilling to take. My most solemn responsibility as president was to protect the country. I approved the use of the interrogation techniques.

But the choice between security and values was not real. And this is exactly the reason we have laws: To prevent people from doing what they may for some reason think at the moment is a good idea, but which society has determined is wrong. No man is above the law. And "the lawyer said it was legal" is not a sufficient excuse.

As for the claim that torture worked, Bush writes in the book:

Of the thousands of terrorists we captured in the years after 9/11, about a hundred were placed into the CIA program. About a third of those were questioned using enhanced techniques. Three were waterboarded. The information the detainees revealed constituted more than half of what the CIA knew about al-Qaeda. Their interrogations helped break up plots to attack American military and diplomatic facilities abroad, Heathrow Airport and Canary Wharf in London, and multiple targets in the United States.

But the only thing we know for sure is that detainees who were tortured made elaborate confessions. That, after all, is what torture is good for. We don't know how much valuable information they really provided. We don't know how much of that information came before they were tortured, rather than after. We certainly don't know how much information they would have shared under proven, standard interrogation techniques.

And under close inspection by investigative journalists, every one of Bush's specific assertions about torture having saved lives has been thoroughly debunked.

The first detainee waterboarded directly on Bush's orders was Abu Zubaydah, in August 2002.

During his presidency, Bush repeatedly used Zubaydah as his Exhibit A for torture. In the book, Bush describes him as a "senior recruiter and operator" and "trusted associate of Osama bin Laden."

After CIA interrogators strapped Zubaydah to the waterboard and suffocated him 83 times in a month, he broke down. Bush writes:

Zubaydah revealed large amounts of information on al Qaeda's structure and operations. He also provided leads that helped reveal the location of Ramzi bin al Shibh, the logistical planner of the 9/11 attacks. The Pakistani police picked him upon the first anniversary of 9/11.

In the book, Bush did not, as he had on several occasions during his presidency, give Zubaydah credit for identifying bin al Shibh as a terror suspect in the first place. That particular claim was undercut by the fact that, some four months before Zubaydah was captured, an FBI indictment detailed bin al Shibh's alleged involvement in the 9/11 plot.

TO BE CONTINUED ...

Progresele realizate de medicina in ultimul secol au permis omenirii sa invinga o serie intreaga de maladii. Exista totusi boli teoretic „eradicate” de decenii, dar luand inca milioane de vieti. Una dintre ele e malaria, careia ii cad zilnic victime mii de oameni. Ar putea fi invinsa aceasta boala, transmisa de tantarul anofel, tot cu ajutorul tantarilor?

 Raspunsul pe care il dau geneticienii la aceasta intrebare este un „Da” categoric. Pentru ca genetica „facatoare de minuni” este pe cale sa mai faca una, in ceea ce priveste transformarea temutului tantar anofel intr-o insecta inofensiva, al carui principal defect va ramane, poate, bazaitul... Metamorfoza are loc, deocamdata, doar experimental, intr-un laborator al Universitatii Michigan, unde entomologistii Vladimir Kokoza si Alexander Raikhel incearca de doi ani realizarea unei specii de tantari modificata genetic, care sa actioneze ca un „cal troian” pentru semenii lor, distrugandu-i.

Aceasta optiune este considerata viabila, in conditiile in care cu toate miliardele de litri de pesticide imprastiate pretutindeni in lume, diversele specii de tantari care transmit malaria, frigurile galbene, febra Nilului si alte boli mortale, rapun anual aproape 3 milioane de oameni.

O sabie cu doua taisuri?

Daca insa, in alte parti tantarii sunt vanati fara crutare, in laboratorul din Michigan ei beneficiaza de o grija deosebita, fiind feriti de intemperii si pradatori, ba chiar cercetatorii le ofera propriul lor sange drept gustare... Si toate astea pentru ca studiul tantarilor de aici poate oferi cheia eradicarii acestei plagi ce ameninta omenirea de mii de ani.

Kokoza si Raikhel cred ca pot transforma tantarii din vectori ai bolilor in luptatori impotriva acestora. Cercetatorii au reusit deja sa stopeze abilitatea tantarilor de a transmite infectii, prin imbunatatirea sistemului imunitar al liliputanelor insecte, pentru ca acestea sa poata ucide agentii patogeni care ii paraziteaza. Modificand o gena a tantarilor respectivi, insectele pot recunoaste o gama larga de microbi, inclusiv temutul Plasmodium falciparum, care transmite malaria, si ii pot distruge.

Pentru a fi mai usor de identificat, tantarilor li s-au modificat si genele ce determina forma si culoarea ochilor, care au devenit mai mari si... rosii! Imbucurator este faptul ca gena modificata pe cale artificiala este dominanta, transmitandu-se si urmasilor tantarilor de laborator, chiar celor proveniti din incrucisarea cu tantari „salbatici”. „In cativa ani s-ar putea ca tantarii modificati genetic sa devina dominanti in salbaticie si incapabili de a mai transmite boli infectioase”, spune Raikhel.

 Si totusi, metoda nu este lipsita de riscuri, pentru ca, asa cum s-a intamplat in multe cazuri similare, lucrurile pot scapa de sub control. Unul dintre scenarii ar fi ca solutia sa fie eficienta doar temporar iar tantarii salbatici sa prevaleze iarasi, pentru ca, dupa cum apreciaza entomologul Andrew Spielman, de la Harvard School of Public Health, „exista riscul ca tantarii transgenici sa sufere ei insisi alte mutatii, pe cale naturala, si sa devina astfel mai periculosi”.

GABRIEL TUDOR - magazin.ro