Watching the Detectives
eisenach, jeffrey a.
"Watching the Detectives" THE GREAT HEALTH, deaths and eight liver transplants among 2.5 million treated patients. Such an incidence could not have been detected in the...
...2002 To order, mail coupon below or call our toll-free number...
...And even if a drug company could afford trials large enough to uncover risks so statistically remote, it would not be practical to recruit enough eligible patients...
...President and his wife actually carried handguns into a White House reception because of their fear of assassination...
...Jeffrey A. Eisenacli is president of the Progress & Freedom Foutindation, a tednwlogy focused think tank iii Waslhington, D. C. WATCHING THE lYorde ~fu~ cu res , F R~eamai ~smKerrusnrss MD KioPcr COMPL wr KWEnAOE...
...It was that they understood how the pieces fir together...
...Whenever serious adverse events are documented and characterized, DNA from patients who experienced the problem could be extracted and compared with DNA from control patients who received the drug and did just fine...
...Can civil liberties-and our basic freedoms-be preserved...
...It wasn't just that they remembered more from their college history classes than you...
...Scientists are learning how to read your genes to tell if you'll suffer a bad reaction before you pop a pill...
...Pharmacogenomics, as this wonderful new science is called, can be used today to bolster postmarketing surveil lance...
...Several airports, including Boston, Fresno and Palm Beach, are deploying similar systems, and it is widely expected their use will spread further...
...The answer is yes, but only if we move quickly to impose some limits on what government does with the information it collects, specifically by limiting how surveillance information is collected, used, and stored, and how long it is retained...
...listen in horror as flames devour the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory and launch a new era of social consciousness...
...Catching jaywalkers at intersections or tax cheats at casino cashier windows is not...
...Second, limits must be placed on the purposes for which surveillance information can be used...
...Drugs have obviated the need for costly surgeries, given us hair back, made our allergies go away and our sex lives return...
...Civil liberties groups argue against even deploying such technology, but they won't be successful in stopping it-nor should they be...
...Information associated with serious criminal investigations should be maintained, but as a general matter information obtained through surveillance should be destroyed within a reasonable period...
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...So what can the FDA do, if even the best doctors and exhaustive clinical trials can't be relied upon to uncover rare but recall-prompting side effects...
...nsTr .r A]muv works, new technologies will indeed soon give governments the ability to monitor the whereabouts and activities of virtually everyone...
...Unless limits are put in place, and quickly, ubiquitous digital surveillance will change all that...
...And security goes beyond technology...
...Offer Good Through...
...These snips contain the genetic variations that determine everything from the color of one's hair to whether a drug will trigger horrendous side effects.They provide doctors with a quick and accurate way to scan your genes for crucial differences...
...Over the years, it's been shown that these proteins in individual patients contain genetic variations that can affect response to drugs...
...PAR KERS GINGER TON ICc n Pd L *R DETECTIVES BY JEFFREY A. EISENACH Will American civil liberties be a victim of the war on terrorism...
...The risk is putting in motion forces that, over time, will erode our fundamental freedoms...
...Preventing terrorist attacks by foreign nationals is an obviously acceptable use...
...In the hands of these three marvelous teachers, you'll visit Salem, Nixon Rcagan Massachusetts and learn the real motivations behind the great witch trials...
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...Like computer code, it takes thousands, even millions of different chemical signals-so-called base pairs-to make up each of the 40,000 genes distributed among the chromosomes...
...Rare but recall-prompting side effects are the inevitable result of market progress, making the drug manufacturers ironic victims of their own success...
...The presumption of innocence until proven guilty is a defining principle ofAmerican society...
...Suire 109 C11,anri1ly...
...A better approach is to place limits on what government does with the information it collects...
...OFFER GOOD UNTIL MARCH 29, 2002 SAVE About Your Professors: Professor Darren SW off, The City College of New York Giricd with a wonderful abtlire to immerse his students in the day-to-day lives of an cxvaordinarily div'crsc rane o1 people...
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...September 11 has pushed that transformation faster, and we need to act quickly to limit the excesses...
...See "The Ghosts In the Machine," TAS, Nov./Dec...
...Happily, a new technology can mitigate their effects-pharmacogenomics...
...2001...
...Such an incidence could not have been detected in the product's standard clinical trial of 2,500 patients...
...In effect, genetic information can be transduced into bits and bytes and follow you around like a personal bar code, ready to be scanned each time you're offered a new drug or battery of medical treatments...
...Professor Louis %fasur, The City College of New York A winner of IIirvard'-s John Cl1v'c Prize for Excellence in Teaching, Professor Masur has an c]ccrrifving gift for parting flesh and blood on ideas, making them as real and exciting as any historical battle...
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...Again, who will, or should, argue against such steps, when they can be plainly shown to enhance our ability to defend ourselves against what may well be a concerted campaign of terror against innocent civilians...
...28 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR •JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2002...
...But America's war against terrorism has accelerated dramatically the pace at which such technology is being put in place...
...Third, surveillance information must to be tightly and securely held...
...And because these lectures arc on convenient audio cassettes, you'll be able to enjoy this remarkable educational experience at your own pace, with no exams or grades to worry about, all for the sheer pleasure of learning...
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...But more people taking more new pills also results in more adverse reactions, a statistical inevitability and one more bittersweet fact of medical progress...
...In fact, the bark of today's surveillance technologies may be worse than its bite...
...yA 20151.1232 .. n-ach12.cnm Priority Code 12542 Please send vie The History of the United States, which consists of scs'enry 45-Ininutc lectures, with complete lecture outlincs J Audio $109.95 (reg...
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...Databases need to be protected, not just from the prying eyes of the prurient press, but from any intruder...
...Tampa police have acknowledged that their much ballyhooed facial recognition system, made by Visionics and launched in June, has failed to identify a single suspect and was taken o f active use in August...
...The question we must now confront is whether increased surveillance will lead inevitably to the creation of a police state, where surveillance information is used to enforce a level of regimentation no American would willingly choose...
...Technology is transforming the very nature of surveillance, from targeted to pervasive collection and from specific to-potentially-general use...
...A reacher who made those oncemoribund tales pulsate with the human feelings that drive the engine of history...
...But powered by Moore's lawthe relentless march of computer processing power-and by everspreading high-speed data net 26 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR • JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2002 The History of the United States An extraordinary 7D lecture presentation by three of our country's most electrifying college professors Have you ever listened enviously while someone you knew talked knowledgeably about American history...
...More than just a "right," it is a statement-that we are responsible first and foremost to ourselves, policed mainly by our own consciences and only secondarily by the state...
...Not only will the amount of information collected increase dramatically, so will government's ability to integrate its wide-ranging data bases and put that information to use...
...March 29...
...THE COURSE CURRICULUM Part 1: Patterns of Settlement and Society (Lectures 1-10) Part 11: Maturation and Independence (Lectures 11-20) Part Ill: The Making of a Nation (Lectures 21-30) Part IV: The Crisis of Nationhood (Lecturer 31-40) Part V: The Making of Modern America (Lectures 41-50) Part VI: Liberalism and the Cold War (Lectures 51-60) Part VII: Consensus and Conflict (Lectures 61-70) Roosevelt Lincoln Truman Kennedy Johnson NO-RISK MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE...
...But until now no one, nor even our most loyal customers, has ever seen a history course like this one-a 70-lecture display of classroom genius covering almost 400 years of cultural collision, intellectual ferment, thundering battlegrounds and moral confrontation...
...More than that, they made it all sound so much more interesting than the history you remember from your own years in school...
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...These variations can be read right from your DNA...
...Most drugs work by interacting with proteins-receptors, enzymes and cell-signaling mechanisms...
...And that would be a loss too great to bear...
...Until now, the use of digital surveillance technology was growing incrementally-red light cameras at a few intersections, closed-circuit TVs in some highcrime areas, an isolated case of facial recognition technology used at Super Bowl XXXV, where there were specific reasons to expect criminal activity...
...The Virginia Beach City Council's vote in November to approve the use of facial-recognition technology in high-crime areas is only one example of the post-9/11 expansion of high-tech surveillance...
...The stock prices of companies that make such systems-Viisage andVisionics are the industry leaders-have more tripled since September 11...
...That will not be easy...
...Professor Staloff is the author of the torrhcerming Tf e tilaking ofan American Thinking Class: baellertuals and InrrlGgents+a in Paritae 1Nassaebvserrs...
...Professor James She nton, Columbia University A campus ](-,end for more than 40 years for the depth...
...Some oppose any increased deployment...
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...Companies such as Ardais, Genomics Collaborative (GCI), IMPATH, and LifeSpan Biosciences have sprung up for the sole purpose of banking tissue samples and correlating them with information about the patients they come from...
...If facial recognition technology, deployed at entry points and airports, can allow us to catch the next wave of terror squads before they strike, who among us believes that either fiscal or civil liberties concerns will-or shouldprevent its use...
...Fourth, surveillance information needs to be subject to strict limits on retention...
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...and observe how the end of the 75-year Cold War unleashes its own new tensions on a nation trying to prepare for a new century...
...And what all of those past events mean to the United States today...
...First, government must not be allowed to effectively "draft" the private sector into its surveillance brigade.There is some evidence that, in the wake of September 11, rules were bent requiring search warrants or subpoenas to obtain information such as e-mails or in-store surveillance camera footage.They must not be broken...
...Somewhere in the middle, a line must be drawn...
...All the thousands of patients prescribed a new medication could have blood spots taken and stored in an approved location...
...drama and sheer grandeur of his reaching...
...Law enforcement authorities may plead the need for indefinite retention in order to be able to track criminal activities after the fact, but the cost of such a policy would be the creation of databases with monstrous implications for privacy and unlimited potential for abuse...
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...The biotechnology industry is already developing the infrastructure to do this, even as the FDA stands on the sidelines, failing to even issue guidelines outlining how a company might receive an approval based on pharmacogenomics...
...When one of these signals is out of sequence, it is called a single nucleotide polymorphism or "snip...
...From the Customs Service to the Coast Guard, from the CIA to the FBI, from airport security guards to local sheriffs, the heat is on now to provide better access to and integration of surveillance data...
...The his tory your friend learned in school was more interesting-because he or she was lucky enough to have one of those rare and gifted teachers who could make history come alive so they would remember it...
...It's American History as you-vc rarely heard it before, from the bacterial deathtrap that doomed Jamestown's original settlers to the unrest of the Great Depression-a time so bitter that a U.S...
...America's first obligation is to protect her citizens, and increased information collection is a necessary and appropriate part of any rational defense.The unavoidable result is that, to an extent heretofore unimaginable, America will become a "surveillance society...
...What is possible and what is actually done, of course, are not necessarily the same thing...
...Part of the answer lies in how we deal with issues raised by increased use of new digital surveillance technologies...
...In theory, at least, government could know everything done by everyone all the time, at least in public places...
...including the 1973 Mark van Doren Teaching Prize...
...This would enable the creation of "snip" profiles that could then be used to screen those most at risk from being prescribed the new medication...
...And that's exactly the point...
...AI IjERS (ANGER- TONJ1 ;-, THEGREAT H£ALTH,eSTRfNlT'H 4 6P'r ,r: deaths and eight liver transplants among 2.5 million treated patients...
...individuals who have access to such information must face heavy penalties for its unauthorized release...
...Professor Shenton has received virtually every honor Columbia can bestow...
...More and better drugs, in wider use, are propelling pharmaceutical companies to record profits, but also exposing them to risks that jeopardize their business...
Vol. 35 • January 2002 • No. 1
