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The seventh son / by Faulks, Sebastian,author.;
When a young American academic Talissa Adam offers to carry another woman's child, she has no idea of the life-changing consequences. Behind the doors of the Parn Institute, a billionaire entrepreneur plans to stretch the boundaries of ethics as never before. Through a series of IVF treatments, which they hope to keep secret, they propose an experiment that will upend the human race as we know it. Seth, the baby, is delivered to hopeful parents Mary and Alaric, but when his differences start to mark him out from his peers, he begins to attract unwanted attention.
Subjects: Psychological fiction.; Novels.; Billionaires; Children of surrogate mothers; Fertilization in vitro, Human; Genetic engineering; Human experimentation in medicine; Human experimentation in medicine; Power (Social sciences);
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Hitman [videorecording] : agent 47 / by Bach, Aleksander,director.; Bakkedahl, Dan.; Beltrami, Marco.; Friend, Rupert,actor.; Quinto, Zachary,actor.; Ware, Hannah,1982-actor.;
Production design, Sebastian T. Krawinkel ; editor, Nicolas De Toth ; music, Marco Beltrami.Rupert Friend, Hannah Ware, Zachary Quinto, Ciaran Hinds, Thomas Kretschmann.Agent 47 (Rupert Friend), known only by the barcode tattoo on his neck, is an elite international assassin. Engineered to be an unstoppable killing machine, 47 is contracted by a covert organization to assassinate high-profile targets on a global scale. He's given the assignment to kill the leader of a crime syndicate who wishes to unlock the secrets behind 47's powers and harness that information into an army of highly skilled hit men. As 47 races to complete his mission, new information emerges about his origins and sparks a race against time as the agent is hunted for the secrets behind his skills.Canadian Home Video Rating: 14A.DVD ; widescreen presentation ; Dolby digital 5.1, 2.0.
Subjects: Action and adventure films.; Assassins; Criminals; Fathers; Feature films.; Genetic engineering; Missing persons; Video recordings for people with visual disabilities.; Video recordings for the hearing impaired.;
For private home use only.
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Ender's game [videorecording] / by Breslin, Abigail,1996-; Butterfield, Asa,1997-; Card, Orson Scott.Ender's game.Videorecording.; Davis, Viola,1965-; Ford, Harrison,1942-; Hood, Gavin,film director.; Kingsley, Ben,1943-; Partha, Suraj.; Steinfeld, Hailee,actor.; Entertainment One (Firm : Canada); Odd Lot Entertainment (Firm);
Harrison Ford, Asa Butterfield, Hailee Steinfeld, Ben Kingsley, Abigail Breslin, Viola Davis, Moises Arias, Aramis Knight, Suraj Partha.A hostile alien race attacked Earth, and if not for the legendary heroics of Fleet Commander Mazer Rackham, all would have been lost. In preparation for the next attack, Colonel Hyrum Graff is training only the best young children. Ender Wiggin, a shy, but brilliant boy, is soon ordained by Graff as the military's next great hope. Once at Command School, he's trained by Mazer Rackham, himself, to lead them into an epic battle that will determine the future of Earth and save the human race.Canadian Home Video Rating: PG.DVD, widescreen presentation; 5.1 Dolby digital.
Subjects: Wiggin, Ender (Fictitious character); Action and adventure films.; Brothers and sisters; Extraterrestrial beings; Feature films.; Genetic engineering; Gifted children; Human-alien encounters; Military education; Science fiction films.; War games;
© c2014., Odd Lot Entertainment ; Distributed by Entertainment One,
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 2
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Dogs and monsters : stories / by Haddon, Mark,1962-author.;
"Greek myths have fascinated people for millennia, seeing in them lessons about fate and hubris and the contingency of existence. Mark Haddon digs into the heart of these ancient fables and sees them anew. The dawn goddess Eos asked asks Zeus to give her lover Tithonus eternal life, but forgets to ask for eternal youth. In "The Quiet Limit of the World" Haddon imagines Tithonus' life as he slowly ages over thousands of years, turning the cautionary tale of tempting the gods into a spellbinding meditation on witnessing death from the outside, and ultimately, how carnal love evolves into something richer and more poignant with time. In "The Mother's Story," Haddon takes the myth of the minotaur in his labyrinth, in which the beast is the spawn of the monstrous lust of the king's wife Pasiphae, and turns it into a wrenching parable of maternal love for a damaged child, and the more real monstrosities of patriarchy. In "D.O.G.Z." the story of Actaeon, who was turned into a stag after glimpsing the naked goddess Diana and torn to pieces by his hunting dogs, becomes a visceral metaphor about the continuum of human and animal behavior. Other stories play with contemporary mythic tropes - genetic engineering, trying to escape the future, the viciousness of adolescent ostracism - to showcase how modern humans are subject to the same capriciousness that obsessed the Greeks. Haddon's tales cover a vast range, from the mythic to the domestic, from ancient Greece to the present day, from stories about love to stories about cruelty, from battlefields to bed and breakfasts, from dogs in space to doors between worlds, all of them bound together by a profound sympathy and an understanding of how human beings act and think and feel when pushed to the very edge. Throughout Haddon's supple prose showcases his astonishing powers of observation, of both the physical world and the workings of the psyche. His vision is clear-eyed, but always resolutely empathetic"--
Subjects: Short stories.;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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GMO OMG [videorecording] / by Hassler, Rod.; Kunau, Josh(Joshua Alex); Seifert, Jeremy.; Compeller Pictures.; Heartworn Pictures.; MPI Media Group.; Submarine Deluxe (Firm);
Cinematographer, Rod Hassler ; editors, Terry Yates, Jeremy Seifert.Today in the United States, by the simple acts of feeding ourselves, we are unwittingly participating in the largest experiment ever conducted on human beings. Each of us unknowingly consumes genetically engineered food on a daily basis. The risks and effects to our health and the environment are largely unknown. Yet more and more studies are being conducted around the world, which only provide even more reason for concern. We are the oblivious guinea pigs for wide-scale experimentation of modern biotechnology. GMO OMG tells the story of a fathers discovery of GMOs in relationship to his 3 young children and the world around him. We still have time to heal the planet, feed the world, and live sustainably. But we have to start now!E.Blu-ray disc (requires Blu-ray player for playback) ; anamorphic widescreen format (1.85:1 aspect ratio); 5.1, 2.0.
Subjects: Documentary films.; Food sovereignty.; Food; Genetically modified foods.; Genetically modified foods.; Seeds; Transgenic organisms.; Transgenic plants.;
© c2014., MPI Media Group,
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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Dogs and Monsters Stories [electronic resource] : by Haddon, Mark.aut; cloudLibrary;
From the "terrifyingly talented" (The Times, [London]) author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time and The Porpoise, eight mesmerizingly imaginative, deeply-humane stories that use Greek myths and contemporary dystopian narratives to examine mortality, moral choices and the many variants of love For millenia Greek myths have fascinated people, who have seen in them lessons about fate and hubris and the contingency of existence. Mark Haddon digs into the heart of these ancient fables and imagines them anew. The dawn goddess Eos asks Zeus to give her lover Tithonus eternal life but forgets to ask for eternal youth. In "The Quiet Limit of the World" Haddon imagines Tithonus' life as he slowly ages over thousands of years, turning the cautionary tale of tempting the gods into a spellbinding meditation on witnessing death from the outside, and ultimately, how carnal love evolves into something richer and more poignant with time. In "The Mother’s Story," Haddon takes the myth of the minotaur in his labyrinth, in which the beast is the spawn of the monstrous lust of the king's wife Pasiphaë, and turns it into a wrenching parable of maternal love for a damaged child, and the more real monstrosities of patriarchy. In "D.O.G.Z.," the story of Actaeon, who was turned into a stag after glimpsing the naked goddess Diana and torn to pieces by his hunting dogs, becomes a visceral metaphor about the continuum of human and animal behavior. Other stories play with contemporary mythic tropes—genetic engineering, trying to escape the future, the viciousness of adolescent ostracism—to showcase how modern humans are subject to the same capriciousness that obsessed the Greeks. Haddon's tales cover a vast range, from the mythic to the domestic, from ancient Greece to the present day, from stories about love to stories about cruelty, from battlefields to bed and breakfasts, from dogs in space to doors between worlds, all of them bound together by a profound sympathy and an understanding of how human beings act and think and feel when pushed to the very edge. Throughout, Haddon's supple prose showcases his astonishing powers of observation, of both the physical world and the workings of the psyche. His vision is clear-eyed, but always resolutely empathetic.
Subjects: Electronic books.; Literary; Magical Realism; Historical;
© 2024., Doubleday Canada,
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You bet your life : from blood transfusions to mass vaccination, the long and risky history of medical innovations / by Offit, Paul A.,author.;
Includes bibliographical references and index."Four months into the coronavirus pandemic, as the death count surged, the FDA made a risky decision: it approved an anti-malarial drug as a treatment for coronavirus, despite limited data on its efficacy or side effects. A month later, the FDA withdrew its recommendation, but by then, the damage had been done. The drug was ineffective and sometimes even lethal. The mistake was hardly a one-off. As virologist Paul. A. Offit shows in You Bet Your Life, from antibiotics and vaccines to x-rays and genetic engineering, risk, and our understanding of it, have shaped the course of modern medicine, paving the way for its greatest triumphs and tragedies. By telling the stories of the events--and of the frequent hypocrisy and cravenness of the characters at their center--Offit shows how risk, and failure, have driven innovation, and importantly, how by examining our mistakes we can make better medical predictions and decisions going forward. From the outlandish origins of blood transfusions, which began with humans receiving blood for barnyard animals, to the the disastrous debut of the first polio vaccine, and the backstabbing and infighting that surrounded early gene therapies, he captures the drama that surrounds medical research, the way ego and laziness can collide with science, and ultimately how those factors should inform what we choose to do and have done to us in the clinic. The history is fascinating in its own right, but the worldwide rush to create a coronavirus vaccine only makes learning from the lessons of history essential. Weighing the uncertainties of a treatment against its potential benefits is one of medicine's greatest ethical dilemmas, and Offit examines it from every angle. He explores not just how patients and their families respond to risk but how everyone from physicians and researchers to universities and regulators do, too, and how that ultimately determines what treatments are put forward. Not everyone has the same goal. And too often the patient's health is secondary. But as Offit shows, we can all minimize risk and failure by learning how to recognize conflicts of interest, to draw inferences from animal models, and to evaluate risk, even when we have limited data. Along the way, Offit asks who should decide what risks are acceptable, and who should pay when the results are fatal. In the end, however, Offit argues that we are gambling whatever we do--and that we need to take that seriously, whether we pursue a treatment or decide to do nothing at all. The answers aren't simple, and the outcomes are life or death. Examining these questions with the compassion of a pediatrician and the rigor of a scientist, Offit reminds us that we all have a role to play in ensuring that medicine upholds its very first principle: to do no harm"--
Subjects: Medical ethics.; Risk assessment.; Pharmacology, Experimental.; Drugs;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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The Mother Code / by Stivers, Carole,author.;
"In this mind-bending debut novel, Carole Stivers explores what it means to be a mother in a world that is more chilling and precarious than ever. It is 2049. When a U.S. attempt at stealth biowarfare goes awry, a team of scientists is engaged to ensure human survival on earth. Their best efforts fail, and they must turn to their last resort: a plan to place genetically engineered children inside the cocoons of large-scale robots--to be incubated, birthed, and raised by these machines, which have been programmed with the latest advances in artificial intelligence: the Mother Code. Kai is born in America's desert Southwest, his only companion his robotic Mother, Rho-Z. Equipped with the knowledge and intuition of a human mother, Rho-Z raises Kai and teaches him how to survive. As children like him come of age, their Mothers transform too--in ways that were never predicted. When government survivors decide that the machines who raised the children must be destroyed, Kai must fight to save the only parent he has ever known"--
Subjects: Thrillers (Fiction); Dystopian fiction.; Artificial intelligence; Motherhood;
Available copies: 1 / Total copies: 1
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