Mal Hussain and Linda Livingstone are the victims of six years of racial violence and

Posted by admin · · Jump to comments

Mal Hussain and Linda Livingstone are the victims of six years of racial violence and harassment. But now, writes Patricia Wynn Davies, they have been given the go-ahead to sue the local council for failing to protect them. Despite a well-documented campaign of racial harassment, leading to 46 separate criminal convictions of the perpetrators, no one has been evicted from the Ryelands council estate in Lancaster, where Mal Hussain and Linda Livingstone run a minimarket. But in the first clear High Court ruling of its kind, a judge has decided that their civil action against Lancaster City Council should go ahead. Jenny, who is visiting India with her mother and is taking part in Indian wildlife week during which she will travel to a tiger reserve, said: "I hope very much that other young people will get involved in the campaign and that my visit will show that young people care about this issue. If enough people care and act on that caring then we can save the tiger." Almost two-thirds of the world's remaining tiger population - which in 1900 stood at about 80,000 - is in India, where at least one is poached every day.. The petition, which Jenny, 16, collected in her local area after seeing EIA work on the plight of the Indian tiger, contains 7,000 signatures - one for each tiger left in the wild today.

Jenny Osgood, from Newquay, Cornwall, presented I K Gujral with a petition she had organised, at a meeting in New Delhi. Jenny was in Delhi as part of a trip organised by the British Environmental Investigation Agency animal protection charity, in co-operation with Indian organisations. Dr John Warner, head of Inex's gene therapy division, said: "Today, one of the main limitations in gene therapy is the inability to get genes to metastatic or widespread disease Our technology has the potential to do just this.". A young British girl met the Prime Minister of India yesterday, and made a personal plea to help save the tiger from extinction. The hope was that the working CF gene would be incorporated into the lung's lining, and prevent the overproduction of mucus. However, the results have been disappointing, and success using retroviruses has remained elusive.But the Inex technique of using fats, which is being followed by a number of other gene therapy companies, may eventually show more promise, even though it relies on an artificial package for the genes.

It incorporated the gene into a modified retrovirus - the class of viruses including HIV, which causes Aids - because retroviruses add their genetic material to that of their target cells. So far, human clinical trials of gene therapy have promised much but delivered little. The first ailment to be attacked was cystic fibrosis (CF), in which a faulty gene causes overproduction of mucus in the lungs, with fatal results.One of the first trials attempting to use gene therapy to replace a faulty CF gene was carried out in Britain. The packages, called transmembrane carrier systems, are made up essentially of fat droplets and are injected into the bloodstream. They contain a package of genes: in Inex's trials, these were tumour suppressor genes, which carry the code to make proteins which stop cells from reproducing wildly. The trials found that the genes' proteins were being produced in secondary tumours.If the findings are confirmed, and can be carried over to humans, it will be an important step forward for the technique. There, the replacement genes take over from the faulty genes which are allowing uncontrolled growth.Although the technique is in its early stages - it has only so far been demonstrated with "marker" genes, rather than anti-cancer genes - and would have to pass a number of clinical hurdles before being used in humans, it suggests that the multi-pronged approach to gene therapy may begin to pay off in a few years.That in turn would mean relief, and perhaps even a cure, for thousands of people both with cancers and inherited disorders such as cystic fibrosis.The new system has been developed by a Canadian company, Inex Pharmaceuticals of Vancouver, and uses artificial "packages" to carry the new genes to the disease site.