While You Were Sleeping: October '08

by Christina Kaminski, September 25, 2008

You can donate your body to science, but what about art? Marco Evaristti, the artist who first gained notoriety with his goldfish-in-blenders exhibit at Denmark’s Trapholt Art Museum, has another project in the pipeline. In a demonstration of his opposition to capital punishment, the artist has secured Texas death-row convict Gene Hathorn’s permission to deep freeze the man’s body after his execution and make it into fish food. Visitors to Evaristti’s future exhibition will have the opportunity to feed Hathorn’s freeze-dried remains to a new generation of goldfish. Lawyers in the US dispute the validity of Hathorn’s testament and bequeathal.
Source: The Guardian

According to a Census Bureau report released in late August, the number of Americans with health insurance has increased—likely the result of growth in government-sponsored programs. Although the number of people covered by private or employment-based health insurance continued to decline, the overall .5 percent increase from 2006 to 2007 suggests that more are seeking coverage from public programs, especially on behalf of their children. Of the remaining 45.7 million uninsured Americans, 8.1 million of them are under 18. Massachusetts now has one of the lowest rates of uninsured people in the country at 8.3 percent (down from 12.6 percent in 1997), owing to the state’s recent health care overhaul. In New York, the uninsured rate is 13.4 percent, 2 percent lower than the national average.
Source: New York Times

In an effort to curb outbreaks of food-borne illnesses, the government has long allowed radiation treatment for beef, eggs, poultry, oysters, and spices. Fresh spinach and iceberg lettuce will soon join this list. Although the process kills E. coli (which accounts for eight percent of all produce-related outbreaks) and Salmonella (eighteen percent of all outbreaks), FDA-approved gamma radiation treatment does not affect Norovirus, which accounts for 40 percent of all produce-related outbreaks.
Source: Center for Science in the Public Interest,
New York Times