Page 6
The Behrend Beacon
Students should take
during holiday break
Florida State University students (from left) Ricky Kennedy, Chris Cantey, Guy Browning and David Dyess are
angry about their home's burglary during Thanksgiving holiday. They recently installed an alarm system. Stu
dents on leave for the holidays are a prime target for burglars.
by Kim McCoy
Knight Ridder Newspapers
Before heading out of town for the
Thanksgiving holidays, the four room
mates locked all the doors in their
house, even the ones to the bedrooms.
They thought their rental home in
southwest Tallahassee was secure until
one of them returned and discovered the
back door swinging open. A search of
the house revealed a DVD player and
about 60 DVDs had been stolen.
"We immediately got a security sys
tem after all that,” said Chris Cantey, a
freshman at Florida State University.
"We'd always been cautious to lock our
doors. When we go home for the holi
days we’ll take our valuables with us."
The number of residential burglaries
increases during the holiday season
because thieves are hunting for empty
homes and apartments, said Rhonda
Scott, a crime prevention officer for the
Tallahassee Police Department. By next
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week, thousands of students will be leav
ing town for the Christmas break. Some
will likely return as crime victims.
"Being in a student populated area,
burglars know when school's out and
specifically target student housing ar
eas," Scott said.
In Tallahassee, there were 38 home
burglaries reported between Dec. 1 and
Dec. 10, which would be considered high
for such a short span of days, said Patsy
Heath, crime analyst for TPD. In one
case, wrapped gifts were taken from un
derneath a tree, she said.
Students and other residents should
know as much information as possible
about their valuable items and they
should engrave them with their driver's
license numbers, police said.
"A lot of times the problem we find
when a house is broken into is that the
people don't know the brand, make,
model or serial number," Scott said. "All
they can say is a black TV or VCR was
stolen. That ties our hands on what to
NtiTtOMM.
CAMPUS NCWS
Friday, December 13, 2002
precautions
look for."
In addition to getting a security sys
tem, Cantey and his roommates also
scribbled a reminder to themselves next
to the door that the was kicked in. In
black marker they wrote, "11-30-02
Never forget."
"When something memorable hap
pens, we write it on the walls," said
Ricky Kennedy, a roommate and fresh
man at FSU.
Another FSU student said it ended
up being pretty easy for a thief to break
into his apartment because he and his
roommate hadn't noticed that an impor
tant feature was missing.
"They didn't have window locks in
the windows," Adam Clark, a junior at
FSU, said about his apartment com
plex. "When we got the apartment we
didn't know that."
The windows now have locks and a
security bar protects the sliding glass
door.
Web porn filters
block health data,
study finds
by Jeremy Manier
Chicago Tribune
The software that many schools and
libraries use to filter out pornography
also can block legitimate health infor
mation sites for young people, includ
ing many with information about birth
control, drug use and date rape, accord
ing to a new study.
In the most in-depth independent look
yet at the effectiveness of filtering pro
grams, the researchers found that at the
most restrictive setting, the six popular
filtering programs tested blocked more
than half of health sites dealing with con
dom use. The blocked sites included
some from the federal Centers for Dis
ease Control and Prevention, Planned
Parenthood and the National Institutes
of Health.
"It's concerning to me that sites we
think of as the gold standard for health
information are being blocked," said Dr.
Caroline Richardson, a family medicine
specialist at the University of Michigan
Medical School and lead author of the
report.
Researchers at the University of
Michigan and the Kaiser Family Foun
dation tested how filtering programs
handled more than 3,500 health and pom
sites for the study, published in
Wednesday's issue of the Journal of the
American Medical Association. The
team found that weak filter settings block
about 90 percent of pornography, while
letting through nearly all legitimate
health information.
The results add fuel to an intense de
bate over whether schools and libraries
should allow children free access to the
Internet or keep them from viewing cer
tain sites. The Chicago Public Library
does not use filters, though research sug
gests that most schools and 43 percent
of public libraries do use the software.
Stanford announces
plan to clone human
stem cells
by Faye Flam
Knight Ridder Newspapers
Researchers at Stanford University have
announced a plan to use human cloning to
create stem cells for medical research.
A spokeswoman for the university said
Tuesday that scientists there would transfer
the DN A of adult cells into human egg cells -
a process similar to that used to create Dolly
the sheep. But the human clones would not
be allowed to develop beyond the earliest
stages.
The university's research will rely on pri
vate financing to avoid a restriction imposed
by the Bush administration that severely lim
its stem-cell research paid for by federal dol
lars.
The Stanford announcement is likely to
accelerate the administration s efforts to ban
human cloning, said Art Caplan, a medical
ethicist with the University of Pennsylvania.
The cells that Stanford wants to create -
embryonic stem cells - have been exciting
medical science for several years because such
cells have the potential to become any type
of tissue: heart, nerves, pancreas, bone, skin.
Supporters of stem-cell research say it could
lead to revolutionary treatments for such dev
astating diseases as diabetes, Parkinson's dis
ease and ALS, or Lou Gehrig's disease.
Such cells generally come from extra hu
man embryos created and destroyed in fertil
ity clinics. A few come front specially cre
ated embryos or firom aborted fetuses. Such
work has been strongly opposed by abortion
foes who abhor the destruction of something
that could become a human being.
Current law forbids the use of federal fi
nancing for any research that destroys human
embryos to create stem cells, allowing only
work on existing lines of stem cells. Research
ers are permitted to use embryos or cloning
to make new stem cells as long as they use
private financing.
Stanford would break ground by cloning
cells from adult volunteers as well as from
The American Library Association has
opposed requirements that libraries use
such programs, and successfully chal
lenged such measures in the federal
Child Internet Protection Act, which
passed in 2000. Emily Sheketoff, execu
tive director of the ALA, said Tuesday
the new study underscored some of the
reasons her group opposes filters, such
as the fact that many pornographic sites
make it past filtering programs.
"Filters don't work," Sheketoff said.
The study's authors noted that previ
ous studies have found that 70 percent
of teens report going online to find
health-related information - making the
blocking effects of some filters more
troublesome.
The study's authors said their research
indicates that most schools and many li
braries use more than the least restric
tive settings. And even minimal settings
can exclude some sites disproportion
ately. About 10 percent of health sites
dealing with safe sex or gay-related
health topics were blocked under the
least-restrictive settings, according to the
report.
The most restrictive software excluded
some odd sites, including 10 percent of
sites dealing with diabetes. One of the
excluded Web pages, a study on condom
failure rates, was on the Web site of the
Journal of the American Medical Asso-
ciation
Evidence of the overly wide net such
programs can cast first emerged in 1995,
when many users noticed that filtering
programs blocked sites about breast can
cer.
Such errors are one reason the Chicago
Public Library does nptuse filt«;rvoffi
cials there said. In one case, the library
found that filtering programs shut out the
Cook County sheriff’s Web site, appar
ently because it contained a registry of
sex offenders.
donated human egg cells.
Last year, the Boston-based company Ad
vanced Cell Technology created a cloned
embryo but did not turn it into a line of stem
cells. If Stanford researchers succeed in com
pleting such a process, they would be the first.
Penn's Caplan said the cloning process was
ethically preferable to the use of embryos from
sperm and egg.
For one thing, it is not known whether an
embryo created from cloning can become a
live human being, since it has only been done
in sheep, cows, mice, and a handful of other
animals. "Cloned embryos have proven very
difficult to turn into healthy animals," Caplan
said.
In that case, cloned cells would not repre
sent potential human beings, Caplan said.
And stem cells from cloning may prove
more practical medically, he said. With clon
ing, doctors could create an embryo from a
patient's own cells, eliminating the risk of re
jection.
If it is medically more promising, he said,
then the research is morally more defensible.
Caplan said he believed it was likely that
the Bush administration would seek to out
law such research. Last year, Sen. Sam
Brownback, R-Kan., introduced a bill to make
illegal the type of cloning to be done at
Stanford, Caplan said.
The Stanford project will be part of the new
Institute for Cancer/Stem Cell Biology and
Medicine, launched with an anonymous, $ 12
million donation to the school. Much of the
institute's research will be geared to treating
cancer. Any stem cells created will be shared
with outside researchers, many of whom com
plain of inadequate access to available stem
cell lines.
Dr. Irving Weissman, an outspoken stem
cell research proponent, was named institute
director.
"Our avowed goal is to advance science,"
he said. "For any group to stay out of the ac
tion and wait for someone else to do it be
cause of political reasons is wrong."