Are banks too big to jail?

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STORY HIGHLIGHTS

Editor's note: Mark Calabria is director of Financial Regulation Studies at The Cato Institute. Lisa Gilbert is director of Public Citizen's Congress Watch division.

(CNN) -- A libertarian from The Cato Institute and a progressive from Public Citizen may not often agree on politics or what the proper role of government should be, but we agree the public has been kept in the dark on the "too big to jail" issue for too long.

Just over a year ago, many were stunned when the Department of Justice decided not to indict HSBC, headquartered in London an one of the world's largest banks. The Justice Department made this decision despite the fact that the bank willfully failed to comply with anti-money laundering laws.

HSBC's criminal activities seemed to most observers to provide a strong case for the government. These activities included permitting narcotics traffickers to launder hundreds of millions of dollars of drug proceeds through HBSC subsidiaries. It also facilitated hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions on behalf of customers in countries that are sanctioned by the United States: Cuba, Iran, Libya, Sudan and Myanmar (formerly known as Burma).

Mark Calabria

Lisa Gilbert

But instead of charging HSBC, the Justice Department entered into a deferred prosecution agreement. Under its terms, the government agreed not to prosecute the company for its actions in exchange for HSBC acknowledging wrongdoing, paying a fine and agreeing to cooperate with the government and remedy its compliance programs. The back's CEO issued a statement accepting responsibility and saying: "The HSBC of today is a fundamentally different organisation from the one that made those mistakes."

One can question the wisdom of our drug war and whether banks should be drafted into law enforcement duties, but those policy questions do not change a bank's duty to comply with the law.

In a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing after the settlement, U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, asked Attorney General Eric Holder why the government chose not to indict HSBC.

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Are banks too big to jail?

Happy New Year 2014 from Cayman Islands Sotheby’s International Realty – Video

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Happy New Year 2014 from Cayman Islands Sotheby #39;s International Realty
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Happy New Year 2014 from Cayman Islands Sotheby's International Realty - Video

Destinations | Islands

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Family vacations fuel a lifetime of nostalgia, from the time we are small children through our adult lives. Island travel evokes a particularly romantic reverie, which jetsetters of all ages will appreciate. Although pulling off a multi-generational trip does take effort, the planning can be fun if you approach it with the right attitude.

First off, it's everyone's vacation, so involve everyone. Call a family meeting, and have each person announce the top three places they'd like to visit and why. Note any overlaps, and draft a list of vacation-spot finalists. Think about each family member's goals or requirements for the trip. If you and your daughter want to pick up surfing, Barbados might top your list. If your son and his grandfather love history, the Maya sites near Cancn are an ancient marvel. If you continue to research, you'll discover several places that offer both surfing and historical sites, plus a kids camp for Timmy and a nature reserve for Grandma. The most important family travel advice: Don't plan on spending every minute together. A little breathing room goes a long way toward family harmony. Instead, choose a destination with a wide range of attractions, so loungers can hit the beach while active types swim with sea turtles. Plan on meeting up at specific points throughout the day, but otherwise, keep itineraries loose. Think about all you'll have to catch up on at dinner! When traveling with little ones, a flexible schedule is key, as Teresa Plowright, About.com's Travel with Kids column writer, advises. "Kids can so easily get their hearts set on something, and if problems arise (anything from a transportation issue to a sibling's tummy ache) then the disappointment is huge. When sightseeing with young kids, for example, I plan one morning activity and don't even mention the afternoon activity until I'm sure everyone's up for it."

Once you've chosen a location, your accommodations will play a large role in your family's overall experience. Family-focused resorts are especially appealing for groups with younger travelers in tow. Adults can savor precious one-on-one time while their little ones enjoy organized and supervised activities. The best advice is to look for resorts with programs aimed toward specific, narrow age ranges a program for 4- to 12-year-olds will likely bore both your preschooler and your preteen. Some resorts even offer themes or "celebrity" appearances, such as your children's favorite TV characters. All-inclusive family resorts make things even easier, especially when trying to coordinate numerous adult families. Plowright says: "Bottom line about all-inclusive vacations: All needs are provided for, fun is abundant, parents can enjoy a beautiful setting and relax. And with all-inclusive pricing, parents never need wonder 'How much will this cost?' when kids want more drinks or activities." One up-front payment means no splitting checks, and purses and wallets can stay in the room. Buffet-style meals are generally available anytime a huge advantage when easing toddlers into new time zones. Plus, picky eaters can make their own plates, while gastronomes-in-training sample chicken luau, okra, steamed mussels or plantains. Families seeking more space and privacy should consider vacation rentals. Justin Halloran of vacation rental network HomeAway Inc. says, "Hands down, the best tip I can offer when traveling with kids is to stay at a vacation rental instead of a hotel." This father of three children under age 4 adds, "Plus, separate bedrooms for the adults and kids is also key for my family because no sleep means no vacation." Depending on the level of service your group desires, prices for basic rental accommodations can be quite comparable to those of resorts, especially when divided among multiple adults. Vacation rentals offer the convenience of your own kitchen, laundry, dining room, etc., so you really can feel right at home only better. Parents don't have to fret over a crying baby at mealtime, and family members with special needs may be more easily accommodated. Plus, your party will experience a more authentic version of island living driving or walking to local food markets, speaking with the neighbors and sightseeing off the beaten track. For the ultimate vacation, villa rentals will have your group living like royalty. These luxurious dwellings often lie steps from the beach, with sweeping ocean views and top-notch amenities. Your personal chef prepares all meals to order, the laundress sees to the washing, a gardener keeps the grounds up to snuff, and whenever you'd like to explore the area, just consult your driver. Nannies are also available at many properties, so adults can enjoy time alone together. Debbie Moncure, owner of The Villas of Bluefields Bay in Jamaica, communicates extensively with families ahead of time to coordinate the details of their stay. "Before they depart, we send them a long list of lunch and dinner options, so they will have exactly what they want when they arrive the first day," she explains. Her all-inclusive villas come fully stocked with guests' favorite food and drink, and chefs easilyattend to dietary restrictions or special requests for children. Whether your clan chooses a Tahitian resort, a villa in Jamaica or a cruise around Hawaii, remember the true luxury of a family vacation is spending time together. As children grow up and lives get busier, our opportunities to devote an entire week or two to family bonding grow increasingly rare. So enjoy each moment and be sure to take lots of pictures.

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Destinations | Islands

Ailing Amazon CEO airlifted from islands

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By Elwyn Lopez, CNN

updated 7:59 PM EST, Sat January 4, 2014

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

(CNN) -- Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos was flown off the Galapagos Islands on an Ecuadorian navy helicopter, authorities there said, an evacuation that happened after the entrepreneur was struck by kidney stones.

Asked about the ordeal, Bezos -- in a comment relayed via Amazon -- responded: "Galapagos: five stars. Kidney stones: zero stars."

A Galapagos-based navy unit said in a press release that Bezos developed renal colic while he was on a tourist cruise near Santa Cruz Island. Daniel Ginez Villacis, a regional coast guard official, ordered that a helicopter fly him from there to Baltra Island.

Lt. Pablo Abarca, a spokesman with the Ecuadorian navy, told CNN that Bezos was transported on a Bell 430 helicopter on New Year's Day. The force has an operative unit on the Galapagos Islands, according to Abarca.

According to the official press release, Bezos, 49, was then to fly to the United States.

While the Ecuador navy said the businessman was being flown back home for surgery, that didn't turn out to be the case.

Amazon spokesman Drew Herdener said Saturday about Bezos: "He got a good outcome. No surgery was required, and he's feeling well."

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Ailing Amazon CEO airlifted from islands

Discovery spotlights key role of mystery RNA modification in cells

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11 hours ago University of Chicago graduate student Xiao Wang and her colleagues based the results of their Nature paper on RNA modification on analysis of HeLa cells, a line of human cells widely used in laboratory research. Credit: Rob Kozloff/University of Chicago

Researchers had known for several decades that a certain chemical modification exists on messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA), which is essential to the flow of genetic information. But only recently did experiments at the University of Chicago show that one major function of this modification governs the longevity and decay of RNA, a process critical to the development of healthy cells.

The chemical modification on mRNA in question is called N6-methyladenosine (m6A). A recent study by UChicago scientists reveals how the m6A modification on mRNA could affect the half life of mRNA that in turn regulates cellular protein quantities That discovery could provide fundamental insights into healthy functioning and disorders such as obesity, diabetes, and infertility.

The m6A modification "affects a huge number of messenger RNA in human cells, and yet we did not know its exact function," said Chuan He, professor in chemistry at UChicago and a recently selected investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He, Xiao Wang and 11 co-authors from UChicago, University of California, San Diego, and Peking University reported their findings on m6A in the Jan. 2 issue of Nature.

RNA in human cells becomes constantly depleted as it produces proteins, an instability that is essential to biology. "Whenever a cells starts to differentiate, transform into a different type of cell, it needs to express a different set of proteins using a different set of messenger RNA," He said. "It can't be the original set."

The disposal of old RNA allows for the addition of new RNA and the production of different proteins. The Nature study documents that this process is regulated by the insertion or removal of a methyl, a chemical group commonly found in organic compounds.

"Biology is about protein expression regulation: which proteins, how many and at what point," He explained. "If you have the right pattern you get healthy cells. If you get the wrong pattern, you get disease."

It is well known that genetic factors can control protein expression, but the methylation and demethylation of RNA can be epigeneticoperating independent of the sequence of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). "This is a very important yet under-explored field," said Wang, the study's lead author and a graduate student in chemistry at UChicago. "It's also a field that is expanding very quickly."

Researchers had long known the presence of the m6A methylation on messenger RNA, but why this occurred remained unknown. He and his associates took a major step in 2011 when they discovered the reverse of the methylation process, demethylation. This discovery involved a so-called "eraser protein" that removed the methyl from RNA, a defect of which leads to obesity. "We basically said, 'Look, if you have certain defect of this function, you get obesity, so there's something going on fundamentally interesting. This methylation appears to play important roles in biological regulation."

He and his associates have now shown that the methylation affects the decay of messenger RNA. "People who are interested in messenger RNA decay or all kinds of cytoplasmic RNA biology now have a new pathway to consider," Wang said.

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Discovery spotlights key role of mystery RNA modification in cells

A Missing Genetic Link in Human Evolution | Simons Foundation

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About 8 million to 12 million years ago, the ancestor of great apes, including humans, underwent a dramatic genetic change. Small pieces of DNA replicated and spread across their resident chromosomes like dandelions across a lawn. But as these dandelion seeds dispersed, they carried some grass and daisy seeds additional segments of DNA along for the ride. This unusual pattern, repeated in different parts of the genome, is found only in great apes bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas and humans.

I think its a missing piece of human evolution, said Evan Eichler, a geneticist at the University of Washington, in Seattle. My feeling is that these duplication blocks have been the substrate for the birth of new genes.

Over the past few years, scientists have begun to uncover the function of a handful of genes that reside in these regions; they seem to play an important role in the brain, linked to the growth of new cells, as well as brain size and development. In September, Eichlers team published a new technique for analyzing how these genes vary from person to person, which could shed more light on their function.

Clare McLean

Evan Eichler, a geneticist at the University of Washington in Seattle, proposes that bursts of genetic change in our great ape ancestors played a major role in ape and human evolution.

Much about the duplication process and its implications remains a mystery. Eichler and others dont know what spurred the initial rounds of duplications or how these regions, dubbed core duplicons, reproduced and moved around the genome.

Despite the duplication-linked genes potential importance in human evolution, most have not been extensively analyzed. The repetitive structure of the duplicated regions makes them particularly difficult to study using standard genetic approaches the most efficient methods for sequencing DNA start by chopping up the genome, reading the sequence of the small chunks and then assembling those sections like one would a puzzle. Trying to assemble repetitive sections is like trying to put together a puzzle made of pieces with almost the same pattern.

Because these regions are so complex, they are often ignored by conventional genome studies, and some regions still havent been fully sequenced, said James Sikela, a geneticist at the University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora. So not only are they important, they are unfortunately unexamined.

A Genetic Burst

In 2007, Eichler and his collaborators took on what seemed like a herculean task looking comprehensively at the repetitive stretches of the human genome. Previous studies had characterized individual regions, but Eichlers team employed new computational techniques and comparative genomics comparing DNA sequences from different species to examine the entire genome. Mathematical analysis published in Nature Genetics that year revealed a set of core duplicons stretches of DNA that appear over and over on a specific chromosome.

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Health care spending growth still very low

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NEW YORK (CNNMoney)

Spending on health care grew by only 3.7% in 2012, continuing a streak of the slowest growth rates on record, according to data released Monday by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The report looked at all spending on health care services, including doctors, drugs, hospitals and nursing homes, and research nationwide. It also breaks down who is doing the spending: consumers, Medicaid, Medicare and insurers.

Spending remained restrained due to the weak economy. People continued to pull back on medical care amid a continued weak job market and providers sought to keep prices in check. The Affordable Care Act had minimal impact, as many of the health reform's major provisions had yet to kick in.

The White House quickly jumped on the report saying that health reform has helped stop the trend of skyrocketing health care costs by stressing efficiency improvements. It specifically cited the act's contribution to lowering Medicare spending by penalizing hospitals with high readmission rates as an example.

Experts agreed, saying that providers began making changes in anticipation of required reforms.

"Every hospital executive has started the process of holding costs down," said Larry Levitt, senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation.

What's clear is that the slowdown in spending growth has benefited patients in recent years, sparing them from major increases in medical and premium costs. But looking at some of the underlying trends shows that growth varied widely depending on the service and payer.

What we spent more on in 2012:

Hospital services: This category grew 4.9%, due to growth both in prices and in the use and complexity of services. A year earlier, the rate increased by only 3.5%. Private health insurance and Medicare picked up nearly two-thirds of all payments for hospital care.

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Health care spending growth still very low

Health care law may suffer from shortage of doctors

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WASHINGTON Signing up for health insurance on the new state and federal exchanges was supposed to be the easy part of the Affordable Care Act. But the really dicey part, according to many health policy experts, is just beginning.

With the law fully in effect as of Jan. 1, they fear Americans who have enrolled in health insurance for the first time under the ACA are likely to discover that having coverage doesnt guarantee them easy access to a primary care doctor, dentist or mental health professional.

Some changes in the works, such as the use of new technologies and allowing mid-level medical providers to perform some functions usually reserved for doctors and dentists, should improve health care access in the long run. In the meantime, said Linda Rosenberg, president of the National Council for Behavioral Health, people are going to suffer.

According to the Health Resources and Services Administration, the federal agency charged with improving access to health care, nearly 20 percent of Americans live in areas with an insufficient number of primary care doctors. Sixteen percent live in areas with too few dentists, and a whopping 30 percent are in areas that are short of mental health providers. Under federal guidelines, there should be no more than 3,500 people for each primary care provider; no more than 5,000 people for each dental provider; and no more than 30,000 people for each mental health provider.

According to the Association of American Medical Colleges, unless something changes rapidly, there will be a shortage of 45,000 primary care doctors in the United States (as well as a shortfall of 46,000 specialists) by 2020.

In some ways, the shortage of providers is worse than the numbers indicate.

Many primary care doctors and dentists do not accept Medicaid patients because of low reimbursement rates, and many of the newly insured will be covered through Medicaid. Many psychiatrists refuse to accept insurance at all.

Christiane Mitchell, director of federal affairs for the Association of American Medical Colleges, predicted that many of the estimated 36 million Americans expected to gain coverage under the Affordable Care Act will endure long waits to see medical providers in their communities or have to travel far from home for appointments elsewhere.

During the debate over the Affordable Care Act, Mitchell said the association pushed for the federal government to fund additional slots for the training of doctors, but that provision was trimmed to keep the health care law from costing more than $1 trillion over 10 years.

There are various reasons for the shortages. Certainly a big contributor is the aging of the baby boomers, who may still love rock n roll but increasingly need hearing aids to enjoy it.

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Health care law may suffer from shortage of doctors

Obamacare Tested by Recession’s Effect on Health Care

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Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Enrollee Sakoun Khanthanoua reads a Maryland Health Connection health insurance... Read More

Enrollee Sakoun Khanthanoua reads a Maryland Health Connection health insurance marketplace pamphlet while waiting to speak to a health navigator at an education and enrollment event in Silver Spring, Maryland, on Dec. 7, 2013. Close

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Enrollee Sakoun Khanthanoua reads a Maryland Health Connection health insurance marketplace pamphlet while waiting to speak to a health navigator at an education and enrollment event in Silver Spring, Maryland, on Dec. 7, 2013.

The U.S. recession remained a drag on health-care spending three years after it ended as a net of 9.4 million people lost private insurance coverage before key provisions of Obamacare had begun, a government report showed.

Spending on hospitals, doctors, drugs and other health-care services rose 3.7 percent to $2.8 trillion in 2012, or about 17.2 percent of gross domestic product, actuaries at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said in a report published yesterday in the journal Health Affairs. Growth was 6.3 percent at the end of 2007, when the U.S. entered an 18-month recession.

The 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Acts largest health-care expansions didnt begin until this year, including private insurance for about 2.1 million new people and expanded Medicaid coverage for others. CMS actuaries have said spending should jump by 6.1 percent in 2014 as a result.

Expanded coverage is going to cause spending to go up, Charles Roehrig, the director of the Altarum Institutes Center for Sustainable Health Spending in Ann Arbor, Michigan, which studies cost growth, said in a phone interview.

Prescription drugs and nursing home costs had led the slowdown. Blockbuster drugs including Pfizer Inc. (PFE)s Lipitor, Sanofis Plavix and Merck & Co.s Singulair lost patent protection in late 2011 and 2012, causing retail prescription prices to increase 0.4 percent in 2012, the actuaries said.

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Obamacare Tested by Recession’s Effect on Health Care

Designing Genes Through Diagnosis

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Clinical Chemistry Womens Health Issue Explores the Ethics of Genetic Testing for Reproduction

WASHINGTON, Jan. 6, 2014 /Emag.co.uk/ Jodi Picoults 2004 novel My Sisters Keeper became a bestseller by exploring the fate of a young girl who is genetically engineered to be a donor match for her cancer-stricken older sister. My Sisters Keeper is fiction, but it is based on the reality of preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). A new Q&A in the Advancing Womens Health issue of Clinical Chemistry, the journal of AACC, explores the ethics of PGD, a form of genetic testing that has already made it possible for parents to conceive a child who is a donor match for a sick relative, who shares their minor disability (such as deafness), or to select gender.

(Photo:Listen to a podcast with Q&A moderator Ann M. Gronowski, PhD, and bioethicist Arthur L. Caplan, PhD.

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PGD was developed after the invention of in vitro fertilization and the ability to culture embryos in vitro, and in many respects, it is similar to the prenatal diagnosis used to screen fetuses for genetic diseases before birth. Its advantage is that it allows parents to choose which embryos to implant in the uterus, thereby avoiding selective pregnancy terminations. For older mothers or couples who are carriers of a genetic disease, the ability to screen for embryos free of certain genetic mutations can play a critical role in ensuring their child is healthy. The more recent and nonstandard uses of PGD listed above, however, have raised ethical concerns, particularly that PGD is veering into the realm of eugenics.

In this Q&A, PGD laboratory director Richard T. Scott, Jr., MD, of Reproductive Medicine Associates of New Jersey, Morristown, N.J.; bioethicist Arthur L. Caplan, PhD, of the New York University Langone Medical Center, New York; and attorney Lawrence J. Nelson, PhD, of Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, Calif., discuss their views on the ethical challenges PGD presents. Former AACC President Ann M. Gronowski, PhD, of the Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, acts as moderator.

I think many infertility clinics will be offering PGD for eugenic purposes and there will be plenty of demand for such services, said Caplan, when asked where he thinks the field will be in 20 years. I think there will be a huge ethical controversy concerning the practice, in that competent counseling may not be an essential part of what many clinics are offering. There will also be keen ethical concerns about the equity of access to such services, in that the rich will have far greater access than the poor.

Scott tempers this alarm by pointing out that extensive research is still needed to fully understand which mutations in our genetic code cause disease. By extension, it could be a long time before we grasp the human genomes complexities well enough to optimize traits by rewriting it. Until then, the Clinical Chemistry Q&A aims to raise greater awareness and spark further debate about this complicated issue.

For more, follow us on Twitter at @_AACC and @Clin_Chem_AACC.

Twitter ChatTo add your voice to the conversation, join Dr. Gronowski (@Clin_Chem_AACC) for a Twitter chat on maternal-fetal medicine and reproductive health.

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Designing Genes Through Diagnosis

A Missing Genetic Link in Human Evolution

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Mysterious episodes of genetic duplication in our great ape ancestors may have paved the way for human evolution

By Emily Singer and Quanta Magazine

SRGAP2: Whereas chimps and orangutans have only one, humans have multiple copies of the gene SRGAP2 which is believed to be involved in the development of the brain. Image: Dennis/Cell/Quanta

From Quanta Magazine (find original story here).

About 8 million to 12 million years ago, the ancestor of great apes, including humans, underwent a dramatic genetic change. Small pieces of DNA replicated and spread across their resident chromosomes like dandelions across a lawn. But as these dandelion seeds dispersed, they carried some grass and daisy seeds additional segments of DNA along for the ride. This unusual pattern, repeated in different parts of the genome, is found only in great apes bonobos, chimpanzees, gorillas and humans.

I think its a missing piece of human evolution, said Evan Eichler, a geneticist at the University of Washington, in Seattle. My feeling is that these duplication blocks have been the substrate for the birth of new genes.

Over the past few years, scientists have begun to uncover the function of a handful of genes that reside in these regions; they seem to play an important role in the brain, linked to the growth of new cells, as well as brain size and development. In September, Eichlers team published a new technique for analyzing how these genes vary from person to person, which could shed more light on their function.

Much about the duplication process and its implications remains a mystery. Eichler and others dont know what spurred the initial rounds of duplications or how these regions, dubbed core duplicons, reproduced and moved around the genome.

Despite the duplication-linked genes potential importance in human evolution, most have not been extensively analyzed. The repetitive structure of the duplicated regions makes them particularly difficult to study using standard genetic approaches the most efficient methods for sequencing DNA start by chopping up the genome, reading the sequence of the small chunks and then assembling those sections like one would a puzzle. Trying to assemble repetitive sections is like trying to put together a puzzle made of pieces with almost the same pattern.

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A Missing Genetic Link in Human Evolution

This Engineered Salmon Could Double World Production: Should You Fear Frankenfish?

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Genetically modified Atlantic salmon, trout, tilapia, and shrimp will soon be coming to a dinner plate near you. Photo: Hans-Petter Fjeld, Creative Commons.

If you thought the seafood section of your local grocery store offered a refuge from genetic modification techniques commonly used in agricultural crops, I have some bad news for you.

AquaBounty Technologies, now owned by synthetic biology company Intrexon (NYSE: XON) , has developed an engineered Atlantic salmon named AquAdvantage Salmon that matures twice as fast as conventional salmon. Aquaculture may not be on your investing radar, but the global industry is valued at over $100 billion and is the fastest growing segment of the worldwide food industry. Genome editing technologies promise to expedite the growth further -- and they will arrive sooner than you think. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is poised to approve the aquaculture company's product for marketing next year, which would open the regulatory door for engineered trout, tilapia, and shrimp being developed by the two companies.

You may not like the idea of altering the genetic code of more complex organisms -- especially those that end up on your dinner plate -- instead preferring the technology sticks to simpler microorganisms being developed by synthetic biology companies such as Amyris (NASDAQ: AMRS) and Solazyme (NASDAQ: SZYM) . However, enhanced aquaculture technologies present impressive growth opportunities and environmental advantages for investors and consumers. Is the technology safe? Are the advantages real and measurable? How long until biotech fish stare back at you from your own dinner plate? Let's swim through the possibilities.

How do you safely make a biotech fish? It's actually quite simple. AquaBounty introduced one gene from a Pacific Chinook salmon into its AquAdvantage Salmon, or AAS, to allow it to grow to full market size in half the time. Despite the hastier maturity profile, AAS produce the same amount of growth hormone as conventional salmon. A molecular switch (called a "promoter") from an antifreeze protein gene was also integrated into the fish genome, although AAS do not produce antifreeze protein. Additionally, all AAS will be sterile females; ensuring there will be no gene flow to wild populations if they escape production facilities.

Engineered fish will undoubtedly encounter some backlash from consumers -- with Whole Foods Market already stating it would ban them from its stores -- but the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced that they were safe to eat in 2010. Moreover, considering that Atlantic salmon hold roughly 40,000 genes -- compared to about 24,000 genes for humans -- only 0.0025% of the genome has been altered. Aside from growth, there are no discernable differences between AquaBounty's engineered product and a wild Atlantic salmon.

Nonetheless, that single genetic change results in a giant gain in productivity. It's important to note that AAS do not grow larger than wild Atlantic salmon -- they simply grow to full size more quickly. Take a look at how they compare to their conventional counterparts:

AAS will be harvested near the 550-day mark. Source: AquaBounty Technologies.

AquaBounty can grow the same amount of fish in half the time (or less) while adding substantial environmental benefits with no additional risks. But are the advantages tangible?

Advantages of biotech fishAlthough Intrexon played no role in developing AquAdvantage Salmon, the companies are exploring ways to utilize synthetic biology to develop even better products with more efficient production profiles. If you think of traditional genetic engineering -- crops and essentially all genetically engineered commercial products created to date -- as the first, most basic form of genome editing, then synthetic biology -- or utilizing the building blocks of life to assemble novel technologies -- represents the next big leap. Either way, both can offer real and measurable advantages.

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This Engineered Salmon Could Double World Production: Should You Fear Frankenfish?

RELIGIOUS CHARLATANS: Law should be enacted to protect people

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06 January 2014| last updated at 11:17PM

In Malaysia, although Islam is the federal religion, the government permits the practice of other religions.

This freedom to practise one's religion and beliefs, especially in a multiracial, multicultural and multireligious country like Ma-laysia, has created a unique spiritual platform for people from all walks of life to live in a peaceful environment with mutual respect.

However, over the years, I have noticed that the freedom of religious practices in the country has somewhat been hijacked by individuals or cults with a different agenda.

Going by the number of media reports of scams and crimes committed by those who claim to be spiritual gurus or mediums is worrying and a cause for concern.

Many of the victims of these religious frauds and scams happen to be our women folk.

Molestation and rape committed by mediums are on the rise, too.

It is sad to note that many innocent people, including the educated, have been conned into parting their money by religious shenanigans camouflaging as spiritual gurus and mediums.

A recent exposure in Tamil press of a spiritual guru's scams has created anxiety and anger in the Indian community.

The time has come for the authorities to consult religious bodies and non-governmental organisations to explore the idea of enacting a law to protect the public from the clutches of these shenanigans.

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RELIGIOUS CHARLATANS: Law should be enacted to protect people