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	Worrisome number of attacks against minorities residing in Pakistan by UN News, Minority Rights Group   13 May 2015   UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has condemned in the “strongest possible terms” today’s terrorist attack in Pakistan which left dozens dead and many others injured, a United Nations spokesperson has confirmed.   The attack targeted a passenger bus in the Pakistani city of Karachi and reportedly killed at least 45 members of the Ismaili Shia Muslim community while injuring several others.   “Pakistan, as a responsible member of the international community, must uphold its obligations and commitments towards protecting its citizens, including all minorities,” the UN spokesperson declared in a statement which highlighted the Secretary-General’s appeal for the Government of Pakistan to “take all necessary measures” to bring to justice the perpetrators of the “despicable act.”   The statement also took note of the worrisome number of attacks against Shia and Christian minorities residing in Pakistan in recent times and urged the country’s authorities to take “swift measures aimed at effective protection of religious minorities in the country.”   “Creating a climate of tolerance, understanding and respect will greatly contribute to achieving this objective,” it added.   In addition, the spokesperson said Mr. Ban extended his “heartfelt condolences” to the families of the victims, the Government and the people of Pakistan and wished a “speedy recovery” to those injured in the attack.   December 2014   Pakistan’s religious minorities ‘face acute levels of persecution’, warns report.   The persecution of religious minorities in Pakistan has intensified in recent years and has reached critical levels, according to a report by Minority Rights Group International (MRG).   Despite some recent signs of progress in Pakistan, including the first democratic transition of power in May 2013, religious communities such as Ahmadis, Christians and Hindus live in daily fear of harassment and intimidation. Escalating violence against Shi’a Muslims also points to the growth of an even more exclusionary form of nationalism based on a very specific understanding of ‘Muslimness’.   The report, Searching for Security: The Rising Marginalization of Religious Communities in Pakistan, concludes that the government has done little to stop the mistreatment of minorities, who are systematically denied social and political rights. For example, Ahmadis remain designated ‘non-Muslims’ by Pakistan’s Constitution and are consequently denied the right to vote, while Christians and others are regularly accused and disproportionately prosecuted under Pakistan’s blasphemy laws.   In an especially high profile case, in October 2014 Lahore’s high court upheld the death penalty against a Christian woman, Asia Bibi, despite sustained pressure to suspend the sentence. Others have been extra-judicially killed as a result of blasphemy allegations, including a Christian couple beaten and burned to death by a mob in November 2014.   Drawing on an extensive review of published research and interviews with a range of activists and minority representatives, the report explores the key drivers of Pakistan’s continued discrimination against its minorities, including legal barriers directly supported by the government.   ‘The Pakistani government has systematically failed to protect the rights of religious minorities, who face discrimination in almost every aspect of their lives,’ said Shobha Das, Director of Programmes at MRG. ‘The government’s unwillingness to protect all citizens not only violates Pakistan’s international legal commitments, but also helps foster a climate of impunity for the perpetrators of abuse, while minorities suffer in silence.’   In 2014, Ahmadi and Hindu communities faced a surge of violent attacks including multiple incidents targeting places of worship. Hundreds of Hindus are believed to have fled Pakistan during the past year as a result of religious persecution, while doctors, lawyers and human rights activists from minority communities, or advocating on their behalf, have been murdered with impunity. Minority women face additional threats, including the risk of forced conversions and marriages.   The discrimination facing non-Sunni Muslims in Pakistan has emboldened extremist groups and enabled the proliferation of hate speech, which circulates in mosques, on social media and even in the classroom. They have also been subjected to regular incidents of violence, including an attack in June that killed a group of approximately 24 Shi’a Muslim pilgrims near the Iranian border.   ‘Religious intolerance and sectarian violence has been able to flourish often as a direct consequence of a legal environment that treats certain religious communities like second-class citizens,’ added Ahmad Salim, Senior Adviser at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI).   ‘The government’s ability to protect all faiths, including its religious minorities, is not only a test of its willingness to preserve its rich social diversity but will also be a major determinant of Pakistan’s future stability.’   Pakistan has consistently ranked among the top ten countries with minorities at risk of mass violence on MRG’s annual Peoples Under Threat index.   http://www.minorityrights.org/13005/press-releases/pakistan-religious-minorities-face-acute-levels-of-persecution-report.html http://www.minorityrights.org/7962/press-releases/press-releases.html Visit the related web page
	Who’s Getting Rich Off Your Genes? by Patricia Williams Professor of law at Columbia University   For those unaware of how much biotechnology is changing the very nature of human identity, now is the time for a quick game of catch-up.   A good place to start might be Bregtje van der Haak’s documentary film, DNA Dreams. It highlights the resources being expended, globally, to pursue utopian visions of “curing” just about every social misery, through genetic manipulation. Disease, hunger, stupidity… it will all be edited out of the genome; whilst harmony, musicality and soaring intellectualism will become the new norm, just by transplanting our mitochondria, editing our nuclei, enhancing our chemistry.   Of course, if you believe that complex traits like intelligence or sociality or political disposition are entirely reducible to genetic functions, I won’t be able to dissuade you here. Welcome to Oz. But if you worry that factors like education or diet or stress or race—or kindness and cruelty—have at least equal claim upon our life prospects, then take a look at a few recent bioethical happenings begging for our collective attention.   A momentous technological revolution is unfolding in our very real, no longer fictive ability to easily and cheaply alter the human germ line. A technological development called CRISPR, which stands for “clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats,” allows scientists to both delete and add heritable genetic variants. Worried about Alzheimer’s? Ovarian cancer? Parkinson’s? Simply edit it out of your body, or that of your children’s children. Don’t like red hair? Short stature? Big nose? Ditto. Want strong bones? Resistance to heart disease? Oh, snap.   The process is so simple and low-cost that, according to Harvard University geneticist George Church, it’s “going to get to the point where it’s like you are doing the equivalent of cosmetic surgery.”   Real debate about this is emerging in the scientific community. In the past few weeks, there have been calls from an impressive array of scientists—including Church and a number of those involved in the discovery of CRISPR—to slow down its use in humans. Some scientists have called only for a public conversation; others have called for a moratorium, arguing that the technology effectively allows non-consensual experimentation on future human generations.   But many more scientists see this technology as an irrefutably good thing. Says bioethicist John Harris, of Manchester University in the UK, “The human genome is not perfect… It’s ethically imperative to positively support this technology.”   Earlier this year, the National Institutes of Health launched an initiative “to leverage genomics, informatics, and health information technology to accelerate biomedical discoveries.” This week, NIH announced the panel overseeing the project.   It includes representatives of corporations like Intel and Google, the Defense Department, and a healthy array of venture capitalists. The goal is to create a “national research cohort of about 1 million people, whose biological data, as well as environmental, lifestyle and behavioral information” is to be shared with researchers.   One obvious question is where they will find a million samples. Most will come from the data of anyone who’s ever sent in a spit sample to direct-to-consumer genetic research companies like 23andMe, and particularly from people who’ve participated in the chat-room conversations such companies host in order to mine your lifestyle choices. If you’ve engaged these companies, you likely agreed to submit your data for research and development, whether you remember providing specific consent or not. Building data sets for experimentation and pharmaceutical development has always been the wealth generator for such companies.   The quest for so-called “precision medicine” is driving a shift in ethical guidelines that is breathtakingly broad. As sociologist Nikolas Rose has observed, the very project of medicine seems to have shifted from a metric of health versus disease to one of ever-expanding perfectibility of the species itself.   Public health organizations like the NIH seem increasingly aligned with organizations whose ethics are driven by proprietary interests rather than public health. The structure of labs in today’s world means that individual researchers stand to make billions, through assays and patents.   This is not to blame scientists: that’s their job, their passion, as well as their potential profit. But the trouble with profit motive as an ethical framework for human health and heredity is that it deploys a risk-benefit analysis. It directs our gaze to the brand new, the miraculous, the happy making potential of product.   Corporations are responsible to their shareholders, not to public interest. If there are risks, they will be downplayed, a lesson would ought to have learned from lead or tobacco or coal companies. And even where there are “miracle cures,” the benefits of that research will not necessarily be available to everyone.   Without a plan for distributed benefit, we will have a system where “perfected” or socially preferred traits will be available only to the highest bidder.   So now we witness a rat race to the patent office, a lunge to own all parts of the genome, to close down the public commons of science. The urgency is framed in a way that exploits our anxiety about mortality itself. Hurry up or you’ll die of an ugly disease! And do it so that “we” win the race—for everything’s a race. A race against time. A race to market. A race to better babies, better boobs.   Let me be clear: I am not against research in principle. I do not even believe that there are necessarily clear boundaries between what we call natural and artifice, or even human and non-human. But the human body is a complex system, a biome within biomes. We are at the very beginning of our appreciation of its genetic as well as cellular, bacterial and viral complexity. We are still only beginning to understand the cascading effect that the stresses, starvations or traumas of one generation can transmit epigenetically to future generations.   From thalidomide to global warming, short-term risk-benefit analyses have led us down paths of irretrievable harm. What we have failed to imagine has been excused as “inconsequential,” swept under the rug as “side effects,” lessons learned rather than lives ruined. The post-War aversion to eugenics—the understanding that despite great variability from one human to another, no one life is worth more than another—has eroded. Never have we more needed thoughtful, unrushed and thoroughly democratic models of transparency, public discussion, and distributive justice. Visit the related web page
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