Ecosystems are both strong and fragile

Within an ecosystem everything is closely connected in an integrated system. An ecosystem can be both strong and fragile at the same time; everything is interdependent; one element feeds another element which keeps the system strong and balanced;

The intricate interconnection can also make an ecosystem fragile; if you take one element for example; phosphate out of the earth by mining, the whole system then has a lack of phosphate; so trees aren't being nourished and plants might not grow well in the area, because the earth is depleted.

If you reduce the water flow; the whole water quality can be affected, if you decrease certain plants; you could change the food source or habitat for creatures large and small.

The end goals of social ecology.

The end goals of social ecology are to find a balanced world where people live in harmony with their environments. The important question to ask is; "how do we balance out what we do in society and how much it impacts our environment."

Social ecology deals with political and societal institutions that people use in relationship to ecology. In the realm of law ; we might make laws that are in favour of natural products or animals.

Another question we should ask ourselves is; "is having only one child an infringement on my personal rights", and "who decides that."

Deep ecology platform

The well being of human and nonhuman life on earth have value in themselves; I agree; other life forms are important just because they exist and give rise to other life.

Richness and diversity of life forms are also values in themselves; diversity is necessary for survival. An example of why diversity is necessary for survival is ; crops as monocultures have devastating effects.

Humans have no right to reduce this richness and diversity; I think that's true; we can only exept that for vital reasons we need to reduce the diversity around us, but that's only in an emergency situation.

The present human interference with the nonhuman world is excessive, and the situation is rapidly worsening; that's right; this is what's happening unless we can agree that the situation has turned around.

The ideological change is mainly that of appreciating life quality, rather than adhering to increasingly higher standards of living. I feel that that is something we need to do; we need to appreciate life quality, and reduce our standard of living; it will be worth doing that if we see that life around us starts to flourish more.

Those who subscribe to the foregoing points have an obligation to participate in the attempt to implement the necessary changes; this is true in my eyes; if we believe this we have to find a way to implement it.

Comments about "The deal that saved the whale".

I think it is a very great endevour to protect the wales in a wildlife refuge in Mexico.Local fishermen, who work as ecotourist guides and bring tourists to watch the wales have a job opportunity. This project can create job opportunities for the local populations, and can be good for the local economy. It is also a good opportunity to study the wales. Because there is so much development and massive tourism in the area it is good to see a succesgfull ecotourism /wildlife conservation effort that is a longterm project.

Can TCM strenghten the immune system?

Absolutely!
TCM can make the immune system stronger. In TCM the spleen is very important for the immune system. The spleen organ is responsable for making blood (white blood cells included). When the spleen becomes deficient; the patients becomes fatigued and gets low appetite and digestive problems; loose stools included.
TCM can tonify the blood, which literally means that the body is stimulated to make new blood (and t helper cells in the blood and white blood cells) through acupuncture and TCM herbology.

Another important organ to tonify in HIV/AIDS would be the liver; the organ that stores blood.
TCM can also move blood (in case of blood stasis (pain) in AIDS patients), and clear toxic heat(the viral load).
Acupuncture and TCM have been thus proven to be very effective in helping HIV positive people, and uninfected people keep strong immune systems.

Feelings about Western appraoaches to HIV/AIDS.

The Western approach to HIV/AIDS exists of treatments that are based on understanding the viral life cycle. Reverse transcriptase inhibitors have been succesfull in preventing the spread of HIV from an infected mother to her newborn; if a pregnant woman is treated with AZT and delivers her child by caesarian, the chance of the baby being infected can be reduced to one percent.
Unfortunately it is difficult for HIV infected people to adhere too their strict schedule of medicines, due to their side effects; protease inhibitors, another major class of drugs that act later in the lifecycle of the virus, can have severe side effects like; nausea, diarrhea. Other nucleose reverse transcriptase inhibitors can cause red or white bloodcells to drop.

I'm wondering if it is safe to use TCM herbal medicinals in conjunction with these medicines, since TCM herbals can tonify the blood which may offset the drop in red or white bloodcells.

Painfull nerve damage and inflammation of the pancreas can also result. These sound like very serious side effects; I'm wondering if TCM if administered early can prevent or treat these side effects.
I think it is pretty amazing how much scientists have come to learn about the HIV virus, but I think further research is needed for treatment, and that includes research of herbal medicines, and not just the extraction of the active ingredients.

I feel that more effort should lie in prevention of the spread of HIV; by education on how the virus is spread, especially amongs high risk groups.I also feel that it is a good thing to distribute condoms to at risk populations/and make HIV medications more affordable to populations that need them.
I'm not suere how I feel about the development of a vaccine that protect against infection with HIV; I feel it is a very dangerous endevour. If a vaccine that is safe is made, I believe it should be made available to at risk populations first.

Are our genes still shaped by natural selection?

Yes our genes are still shaped by natural selection. A group of researchers have detected almost 700 regions of the human genome where the genes seem to have been reshaped by natural selection, a principal force of evolution in the last 5,000 to 15,000 years.
These genes, some responsable for the senses of taste and smell, bone structure , skin color, brain function and digestion show this evolutionary change.

Jonathan Pritchard, a population genecisist at the University of Chicago created a scan of the human genome. According to him the scan of the human genome is different from the previous two, through a statistical test that he created,he identified certain genes that started to spread through populations in recent millenia and have not yet become universal, as many advantageous genes usually do. The selected genes that he has detected fall into a handfull of functional categories, as might be expected if people were adapting to specific changes in their environment. Some are genes involved in digesting particular foods like the lactose-digesting enzyme gene common in most Europeans. Some are genes that mediate taste and smell as well as detoxify plant poisons, perhaps signaling a shift in diet from wild foods to domesticated plants and animals.

Dr Pritchard's team found that several genes associated with embryonic development of the bones had been under selection in East Asians and Europeans , and these could be another sign of the forager- to farmer transition. The relative handfull of selected genes that Dr Pritchard's study has pinpointed may be generally similar. Each gene has astory of some pressure that we as human beings adapted to.