Center sued for canceling anti-Darwin film

FLORA AND FAUNA

Tasmanian devil cancer advances made
Melbourne (UPI) Dec 31, 2009 - Australian scientists say they are a step closer to diagnosing and vaccinating against a puzzling facial cancer driving Tasmanian devils toward near-extinction. Devil facial tumor disease - which has wiped out nearly 70 percent of all devils on the Australian island of Tasmania since 1996 and could obliterate the population in 35 years - likely began in the animals' Schwann cells, a type of tissue that protects nerve fibers, the researchers from Tasmania's Department of Primary Industries, Water and Environment and Melbourne's Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research say. The cancer is transmitted when the carnivorous marsupials bite each other's faces during fights, the researchers say in the Friday edition of the journal Science. The aggressive, parasitic cancer grows rapidly, blocking the animal's mouth and spreading to other organs. The affected animals typically starve to death.

Transmissible cancer is extremely rare, scientists say. The only one other known type is canine transmissible venereal tumor, spread in dogs through sexual activity. The Tasmanian researchers have also identified genetic markers for the devils' disease, helping doctors easily distinguish the facial tumor disease from other devil cancers and eventually helping determine a genetic pathway to attack the tumor itself. "This is the first application of genetics to estimate the basic biology of the tumor," study co-author Tony Papenfuss, a bioinformatics researcher at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, told Time magazine. "And we've produced a set of tools that can push that information further." Pappenfuss says it will take time to transform the new results into a successful vaccine. But Australian and U.S. researchers have compiled a catalog of devil genes that may contribute to the tumor's growth - which could help design a vaccine. The difficulty will be creating a treatment that attacks the tumor, but spares healthy cells, Papenfuss says.

by Staff Writers
Los Angeles (UPI) Dec 31, 2009
The California Science Center has been sued for canceling a film that attacked the science of evolution and promoted intelligent design, court records say.

The lawsuit, filed by the American Freedom Alliance in Los Angeles Superior Court, alleges the state-owned center improperly bowed to pressure from the Smithsonian Institution and University of Southern California professors in canceling "Darwin's Dilemma: The Mystery of the Cambrian Fossil Record" at the museum's Imax Theater.

Science Center President Jeffrey Rudolph declined to comment, but told the Los Angeles Times in a statement the screening "was canceled because of issues related to the contract" with the alliance.

The alliance -- a Los Angeles group that says it "promotes, defends and upholds Western values and ideals" and envisions "a national alliance of people of faith" -- contends the center, not the alliance, violated the contract.

It also alleges the center violated the alliance's rights under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The alliance seeks punitive damages and compensation for financial losses, as well as a court declaration that the center violated the Constitution and cannot refuse the group the right to rent its facilities for future events, the Times says.

The alliance had planned an Oct. 25 screening of two films at the museum -- a short film called "We Are Born of Stars," which favors Darwin's theory, and "Darwin's Dilemma," a feature-length documentary that criticizes Darwin and promotes intelligent design, the Times says.

Intelligent design asserts certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as Darwinian natural selection.

Intelligent design critics dismiss it as a scientific cloak for the religious belief known as creationism that's anchored in a literal reading of the biblical Book of Genesis.

An overwhelming majority of scientists consider evolution proved beyond a doubt by genetic and fossil evidence.

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