View Systems, Inc. engages in the development, production, and marketing of computer software and hardware systems for security and surveillance applications primarily in the United States. It offers products relating to visual surveillance, intrusion detection, and physical security. The company’s principal products include Visual First Responder, a wireless camera system that sends real-time images back to a video monitor at a command post located outside the exclusion zone or containment area; SecureScan Concealed Weapons Detection System, a walk-through concealed weapons detector that uses passive magnetic sensing technology and location algorithms to pinpoint the location, size, and number of threat objects; and ViewMaxx Digitial Video, a high-resolution, digital video recording and real-time monitoring system. Its products also comprise RADView, an integrated neutron and gamma-ray radiation subsystem that can be integrated into other detection systems, such as fire, breach, magnetic, explosive, nuclear, biometric, or video; biometric verification systems; and magnetic door locks. In addition, the company offers support services for its products, including onsite consulting/planning with customer architect and engineers; installation and technical support; training; and extended service agreements. It offers its products primarily to government and law enforcement agencies, commercial security professionals, private businesses, and residential consumers. The company was incorporated in 1989 as Beneficial Investment Group, Inc. and changed its name to View Systems, Inc. in 1998. View Systems, Inc. is based in Baltimore, Maryland.

View Systems, Inc. engages in the development, production, and marketing of computer software and hardware systems for security and surveillance applications primarily in the United States. It offers products relating to visual surveillance, intrusion detection, and physical security. The company’s principal products include Visual First Responder, a wireless camera system that sends real-time images back to a video monitor at a command post located outside the exclusion zone or containment area; SecureScan Concealed Weapons Detection System, a walk-through concealed weapons detector that uses passive magnetic sensing technology and location algorithms to pinpoint the location, size, and number of threat objects; and ViewMaxx Digitial Video, a high-resolution, digital video recording and real-time monitoring system. Its products also comprise RADView, an integrated neutron and gamma-ray radiation subsystem that can be integrated into other detection systems, such as fire, breach, magnetic, explosive, nuclear, biometric, or video; biometric verification systems; and magnetic door locks. In addition, the company offers support services for its products, including onsite consulting/planning with customer architect and engineers; installation and technical support; training; and extended service agreements. It offers its products primarily to government and law enforcement agencies, commercial security professionals, private businesses, and residential consumers. The company was incorporated in 1989 as Beneficial Investment Group, Inc. and changed its name to View Systems, Inc. in 1998. View Systems, Inc. is based in Baltimore, Maryland.

, I would like to tell you hing about my discovery of Hot stocks

there is an article entitled," JAILS USE HIGH-TECH SCREENING". THE article is available via the internet site. The piece talks about a fantastic new metal detector... I happen to know that the unit is the SecureScan by ViewSystems and the symbol is V Y S T .OB
This unit was used in the last two baseball ALL STAR GAMES. It is also used in the SEC headquarters in Washington DC...and was funded by the Department of Justice. They have them in the San Diego port and some rail system in PA.
I think this unit could very well be in every airport in the world. Read the article.
Do your own DD. This looks like another HANS..A REAL WEALTH BUILDER.

My freinds I will change my name from Massoud to anything you can call me & I put my two cents on this stock Because there are better opportunities for your money to work for you right now. This stock is weak and you can probably pick it up cheaper. Actually you can already pick it up over $1 cheaper from when I first posted this.

The market is solid and this stock is lagging.

This company will be growing in leaps and bounds. The company is profitable already and profits are going to grow at a very fast rate. The worlds need for energy is what will drive all this. That need is not in any sort of jeopardy.

The only problem is no one wants to own this stock right now. It is being sold not bought. So for now this stock should not be owned. When it starts to gain momentum it will take off and fly like a hummingbird on crack. I imagine that will come after one of the next earnings releases. You will be able to pick up shares much cheaper between now and then.

times are US/Eastern

Verint Systems, Inc. provides analytic software-based solutions for the security and business intelligence markets. Its analytic solutions collect, retain, and analyze voice, fax, video, email, Internet, and data transmissions from voice, video and IP networks for the purpose of generating actionable intelligence for decision makers. The company primarily offers communications interception solutions, such as STAR-GATE, RELIANT, and VANTAGE; networked video solutions that include NEXTIVA; and contact center actionable intelligence solutions, which include ULTRA. Verint Systems serves government entities, global corporations, law enforcement agencies, financial institutions, transportation agencies, retail stores, utilities, and communications service providers. The company sells its products through a combination of direct sales force; and agents, distributors, resellers, and systems integrators, principally in Americas, Europe, the Middle East, and the Asia Pacific Region. Verint Systems was organized as Interactive Information Systems Corporation in 1994 and changed its name to Comverse Information Systems Corporation in 1996. Further, Comverse Information Systems changed its name to Comverse Infosys, Inc. in 1999; and to Verint Systems, Inc. in 2002. The company is headquartered in New York City. Verint Systems, Inc. is a majority owned subsidiary of Comverse Technology, Inc.

A4S Security, Inc. markets mobile digital video recording systems for security and surveillance in the United States. It provides video, audio, and information recording devices. It offers ShiftWatch TVS, mobile digital recording product line, which is designed for transportation, law enforcement, and general security applications; and Tapestream, proprietary data capture technology that records high resolution video at broadcast quality in a mobile environment to both digital tape and a hard drive. The company also offers ShiftWatch LE, a police surveillance product; and ShiftWatch VSS, a stationary system designed for facility surveillance. The company was organized in 1999. It was formerly known as A4S Technologies, Inc. and changed its name to A4S Security, Inc. in May 2005. A4S Security is based in Loveland, Colorado.

Cisco and many other US stocks trade on the Berlin stock exchange every day. You can check the Berlin quote before the US markets open to get an idea of where it might be going.

The site www·berlinstockmarket·com lets you enter a US symbol and get a quote on both the Berlin and US markets.

Good trading and go CSCO

 better-than-expected outlook

The San Jose-based network equipment maker's (NASDAQ:CSCO - News) stock closed the day at $19.78, a 14.38 percent increase. Cisco started the day at $19.35, after closing Tuesday at $17.29. The stock's 52-week range was from $16.83 to $22.

Prior to the rally, Cisco shares had been down roughly 21 percent over the past three months.

Credit Suisse predicted earnings will rise at about a 20 percent annual rate through 2009.

Cisco's fourth quarter revenue grew by 21 percent, beating analysts' expectations.

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Bipolar Disorder Glossary Acute A disease or condition that occurs suddenly and does not usually last for a long time, but could produce strong symptoms. Adverse event (see also "side effect") Any effect caused by a medication or therapy other than the reason for which it was prescribed. It may or may not be expected. Anticonvulsant/Antiepileptic medication Medications used to control or prevent seizures; some of these medications also are used to treat symptoms of bipolar disorder and other conditions. Antidepressant medication Medication used to treat depression and other conditions. Usually not used alone to treat depression in bipolar disorder. Antipsychotic medication Medication mostly used to treat mania. It also treats psychosis (for example, seeing things or hearing voices that are not actually there). Bipolar disorder Also known as manic depression, an illness that can cause extreme shifts in thoughts, energy, mood, and behavior; a person's mood may swing between "highs" (mania) and "lows" (depression); in between mood swings, a person may have few or no symptoms. Bipolar I disorder (BP I) The most common type of bipolar disorder. This condition is associated with one or more manic or mixed episodes. It may also include one or more major depressive episodes. Bipolar II disorder (BP II) A type of bipolar disorder. This condition is associated with one or more major depressive episodes and hypomanic episodes. Chronic A disease or condition that is long-lasting. Cyclothymia A mood disorder in which a person may have repeated periods of mild depression and periods of normal or slightly elevated mood. Depression A condition of feeling sadness that may include symptoms such as hopelessness, loss of appetite, sleep disruption, anxiety, low energy, poor concentration, inability to feel pleasure, and thoughts of suicide. Depression may also be a symptom of different conditions. Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) A form of treatment for severe mania or depression. It can also help people who do not do well with medication. Episode In bipolar disorder, a period of either mania or depression that may last for hours, days, weeks, or even months. Hallucination Something seen, heard, felt, tasted, or smelled that is not really there. Hypomania A milder version of mania. Major Depressive Disorder (see also "Unipolar depression") A specific disorder of feeling extreme sadness, for at least 2 weeks or more, that may include symptoms such as hopelessness, loss of appetite, sleep disruption, anxiety, low energy, poor concentration, inability to feel pleasure, and thoughts of suicide. Mania An excited mood that may result in mental and physical hyperactivity, disorganized thoughts, and erratic behavior; symptoms may include an extreme feeling of well being, irritability, racing thoughts, less need for sleep, rapid speech, impulsiveness, recklessness, and in severe cases, psychosis and hallucinations. Manic depression Another name for bipolar disorder. Mixed state An episode in which symptoms of both mania and depression are present. Paranoia A mental state characterized by suspiciousness, hostility, extreme sensitivity to rejection, and self-importance. Placebo A substance containing no medication that is used as a control in an experiment to determine the effectiveness of a medication; also called a "sugar pill." Psychiatrists Physicians who specialize in evaluating and treating mental, emotional, or behavioral disorders; they are medical doctors (MDs) who can prescribe medications. Psychologists Specialists who are skilled in the science of the mind and behavior; they are not medical doctors (MDs), but are trained to diagnose mental illness and provide psychotherapy. Psychopharmacologists Usually psychiatrists (medical doctors) who are specifically trained to study the effect of medications on the mind and behavior. Psychotherapists Individuals (psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers) who are practitioners of psychotherapy, also called "talk therapy" or counseling. Psychosis A symptom, state, or condition that may include delusions, hallucinations, unreasonable fears, withdrawing from friends and family, and problems with concentration. Psychotherapy Also known as "talk therapy" or counseling; involves regular conversations with a trained mental health professional and can be combined with medication to treat various types of psychiatric (mental) illness, such as bipolar disorder. Racing thoughts A symptom of mania in which a person has uncontrollable and quickly changing thoughts and ideas. Rapid cycling A variation of bipolar disorder in which a person switches more quickly between symptoms of depression and mania or hypomania, experiencing 4 or more episodes within a year. Side effect Any effect caused by a medication or therapy other than the reason for which it was prescribed. It may or may not be expected. Unipolar depression (see also "Major Depressive Disorder") A specific disorder of feeling extreme sadness, for at least 2 weeks or more, that may include symptoms such as hopelessness, loss of appetite, sleep disruption, anxiety, low energy, poor concentration, inability to feel pleasure, and thoughts of suicide.

Important Safety Information about LAMICTAL LAMICTAL is not for everyone. Most people who take LAMICTAL tolerate it well. Common side effects with LAMICTAL include dizziness, headache, blurred or double vision, lack of coordination, sleepiness, nausea, vomiting, insomnia, and rash. LAMICTAL may cause other side effects not listed here. If you develop any side effects or symptoms you are concerned about or need more information, call your doctor. Although most patients who develop rash while receiving LAMICTAL have mild to moderate symptoms, some individuals may develop a serious skin reaction that requires hospitalization. Rarely, deaths have been reported. These serious skin reactions are most likely to happen within the first 8 weeks of treatment with LAMICTAL. Serious skin reactions occur more often in children than in adults. Rashes may be more likely to occur if you: (1) take LAMICTAL in combination with valproate [DEPAKENE®* (valproic acid) or DEPAKOTE®* (divalproex sodium)], (2) take a higher starting dose of LAMICTAL than your doctor prescribed, or (3) increase your dose of LAMICTAL faster than prescribed. It is not possible to predict whether a mild rash will develop into a more serious reaction. Therefore, if you experience a skin rash, hives, fever, swollen lymph glands, painful sores in the mouth or around the eyes, or swelling of lips or tongue, tell a doctor immediately, since these symptoms may be the first signs of a serious reaction. A doctor should evaluate your condition and decide if you should continue taking LAMICTAL. LAMICTAL is indicated for the maintenance treatment of bipolar I disorder to delay the time to occurrence of mood episodes in people 18 years of age or older treated for acute mood episodes with standard therapy. The effectiveness of LAMICTAL in the acute treatment of mood episodes has not been established. *Depakene (valproic acid) and Depakote (divalproex sodium) are registered trademarks of Abbott Laboratories.

Patient Information Leaflet for LAMICTAL® (lamotrigine) Complete Prescribing Information for LAMICTAL Complete Prescribing Information is provided in Adobe?s Portable Document Format (PDF). To view these documents, you will need Adobe Acrobat Reader. If you do not have it and you are unable to or do not wish to download Acrobat Reader, but still wish to receive complete Prescribing Information, please click here.    |

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Pounding Nails

( I despise people like hamid A , Ata Kachal , Saeed and Sohrab Sheerazi and the most filthiest ugliest  of anyone I have ever known the Fucking " EBY KOS KESH "

who is currently and probably abusing his new wife but has to know that this time we are monitoring his behavior closely and legally would stop him doing the abusive behavior but still despite the conflicts and all the insults from the past whishing the blue eye devil , skinned diseased ( sores and secondary syphilis)  with the new set of teeth but the same two faced back stabbing personality ...the best in the world however will intervene their bipolar ( in closet shiraz gay ) but  we have to go trough the respectful district attorney of Dallas county " to bring him to justice we will do so because the way he managed to get a way from prosecution in the past was that on days that he had a hearing for beating up his wife , he would put different volume / Diazepam and downers pills ( I had a prescription and while he was staying with me as he was supposed to be staying with his wife , I noticed my prescription drugs missing and after I confronted him that's  what he had to say that he would put the pills in her coffee coursing her to miss her court day and the case would be dismissed for few times and if you miss the  appearance to the honorable judge they have no choice but to dismiss the allegations but since she wanted every one to know that the entire marriage with him was based  on a contract to get his green card so that it would stop him from being deported &  in return she would get some money and  property as a part of scam to give him a green card which they had agreed upon.

but things had changed because he did not want to pay and on top of that he was abusing her but I make the story short and leave the things like the way they are for the time being . 

 

Did the Stock Market crash of 2000s not teach you guys anything? Ethanol is another fad. And with all this 100 degrees+ temperature destorying corn crops everywhere

Cisco

And today in pain I should not be asking GOD, "Why me?"

 

Please look for the new link for my new site

 

New website under

 

 

construction

 

 

 

 

Coming soon

 

new website on the way

My new website is coming soon

Imagine knowing the secrets Nostradamus never intended humanity to decipher.

In May 2004, members of the Italian National Library in Rome made an amazing discovery. Buried in their archives was an unknown manuscript written by the famed prophet Michel de Notradame, or Nostradamus (1503-1566). This manuscript was handed down to his son and later donated to Pope Urban VIII. It did not surface again until now, almost four hundred years later. Due to the pressure and scrutiny of the Inquisition, Nostradamus was forced to scramble both the meaning and the order of his quatrains. He made sure humanity would not be able to use them until we had become sophisticated enough to decode them. That time has finally arrived.

Using cutting-edge data mining techniques, Dr. Michael Rathford sifted this complex word puzzle searching for significant patterns and relationships. Almost immediately, he came up with the predictive model known as The Nostradamus Code. When the prophecies-within-prophecies are deciphered, the timeline of World War III is revealed. You will read about Osama Bin Laden, the next major terrorist attack on the US, a confrontation between the US and Iran/North Korea, and great detail on the timing and course of World War III.

 healthy foods

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Specialty Definition: Academic degree

(

A degree is any of a wide range of awards made by institutions of higher education, such as universities, normally as the result of successfully completing a programme of study.

Universities started to be set up in Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries. Teaching in universities was only carried out by people who were properly qualified, as with other professions - or guilds: faculties in universities were organised as guilds. In the same way that a carpenter would attain the guild status of a "master carpenter" when fully qualified, a teacher would become a "master" when he had been licensed by his profession - the teaching guild.

A degree was a step on the way to becoming a master, and therefore a qualified teacher. "Graduate" is based on the Latin word "gradus" for a step - it was a step on the way to becoming qualified. Originally the only qualification was the master's degree: the bachelor's degree only marked the completion of a stage in the training. It was awarded to a candidate who had studied the prescribed texts in the trivium (grammar, rhetoric and logic) for three or four years and had successfully passed examinations held by his masters.

Today the terms master, doctor and professor signify different levels of academic achievement, but initially were equivalent terms. The University of Bologna in Italy, regarded as the oldest university in Europe, was the first institution to award the degree of doctor in civil law in the late 12th century, and awarded similar degrees in other subjects including medicine. (It is interesting to note that it is only in medicine that the term "doctor" is still used by students who have obtained their first academic qualification - a throwback to these times.)

Other universities went down a different line. The University of Paris used the term "master" for its graduates, and the English universities of Oxford and Cambridge adopted the Parisian system.

The practice developed along these lines, and became linked with the subjects studied. Scholars in the faculties of arts or grammar became known as masters, but those in philosophy, medicine and law were known as doctor. As study in the arts or in grammar was a necessary prerequisite to study in subjects such as philosophy, medicine and law, the degree of doctor assumed a higher status than the master's degree. The hierarchy that we know today - the Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D) degree being more advanced than the Master of Arts (M.A.) degree - was being developed. The German universities developed the practice of using the term "doctor" for all advanced degrees, and this usage spread across the academic world.

The French system and terminology shows very strong links with the past and the original meaning of the academic terms. The baccalauréat ( cf. "bachelor" ) is conferred upon French students who have successfully completed secondary studies and admits the student to the university. When students qualify from university, they are awarded "licence", - very much as the medieval teaching guilds would have done, and the students are qualified to teach in secondary schools or to go on to higher-level studies.

In Germany, the doctorate is still the only higher degree granted, but with additions to specify the area of study - such as Dr.rer.nat. (Doktor rerum naturalium) in natural sciences and Dr.Ing. (Doktor-Ingenieur) in engineering.

In Europe, degrees are being harmonised through the Bologna process. This is based on a three-level hierarchy of degrees (Bachelor:Master:Doctor), which is currently being introduced in those countries that currently only have two stages.

Types of degree (with examples):

• Associate's degrees (US): AA, AS
• Foundation degrees (UK): FdA, FdSc
• Bachelor's degrees: BA, BS, BSc, BFA, BCL, LLB
• Master's degrees:
  • Undergraduate (UK): MEng, MSci, MChem, MPhys, MMath, MESci, MGeol
  • Postgraduate: MA, MSc, MS, MPhil, MFA, MBA, M.P.A, M.P.Aff, MLitt, M.P.M, M.P.P, LLM
• Doctorates:
  • Junior: PhD, EdD, DNursSci, JD, DBA
  • Higher: DD, DSc, DLitt, DMus, DCL

See also: Degrees of Oxford University

Get 50% of your trades wrong and still
We'll show you exactly when to buy and sell stocks with a proven method used by professional traders.

Our approach to profiting in the stock market is a simple, but powerful strategy. We buy stocks which demonstrate the potential for explosive gains, while maintaining a highly disciplined exit strategy to manage risk.

You see, while everyone is always focused on the goal of how much they can make buying or shorting a stock, they forget to concern themselves with how much they risk losing. The secret to creating great wealth in the stock market, isn't big gains; it's small losses.

By focusing on your potential risk and identifying your exit plan should your trade go against you, it is easy to keep emotions out of the game allowing you to think clearly and stick to your trading plan.

By itself, that strategy is not enough to be successful. You also need to have a proven and consistent strategy that will allow you to find winning stocks in any market environment. At Hot Stix, we use a visual form of Technical Analysis that is both simple and effective.

Technical Analysis allows us to find setups by identifying certain chart patterns. Some people think Technical Analysis needs to be complex and mathematical. We think it's better to keep it simple. Our practice was discovered more than 50 years ago, and has proven itself to work in every market environment.

Here is a sample of how it works:

EXAMPLE OF OUR SERVICE:

This is an actual buy recommendation we made on the stock Yahoo (YHOO) in November of 2001.

Step 1) First we identify the setup and alert our members ahead of time to a potential trade. We identified a pattern on the chart and told our members to BUY this stock when it crossed over the upper blue line.

Step 2) Once the trade is activated, we post follow up commentary as the trade unfolds. Here, the buy is triggered and we follow along with periodic updates so you are never left in the dark.

Step 3) When the stock reaches our target price, we close out the trade. We follow all of our recommendations from start to finish, even the ones that don't work out as perfect as this one did. Unlike most services, ALL of our past trade recommendations are fully available for your review.

In a matter of a few days, we made a profit of 25% on that one trade. Obviously, not all of our trades go exactly as planned. In fact, a good majority of our trades do not meet our goals. However, we employ a strategy that keeps our losses small. Typically, if the trade goes south, we will exit for a small loss of less than 5%.

This strategy of keeping losses small is extremely effective.

If you win only 1 out of 3 times, with your losers losing 5% and your winners gaining 25%, you can make extremely large profits. That's right -- just like in baseball, you don't need a high batting average to make the all star team.

Let's do the math assuming there are only 1 out of 3 winners. Say you make 9 trades of $10,000 each in one month. That means you'll lose money on 6 and make money on only 3. The 6 losers will cost you $3,000 (6 x 5% loss on each of the $10,000 trades) and the 3 winners will net you $7,500 (3 x 25% gain on each of the $10,000 trades) for a total profit of $4,500. Keep that up consistently, and pretty soon you'll be owning your own baseball team.

Want proof this works?

Our total gain of all trades since inception over three years ago is 723.7%. (Data is up to October 2005 and does not include commission costs. Past performance is no guarantee of future results.) That didn't come from a few big home runs, but from many, many singles and doubles and a disciplined exit strategy that also kept us from any major catastrophes.


The benefits to practicing technical analysis go beyond merely providing an opportunity for extraordinary profits and gains in wealth.

Followers of Technical Analysis also enjoy the:

*Ability to profit in both a bull and a bear market.

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Aanis Elspas is a mother of four. Unlike most parents, she had three of her children simultaneously. The nine-year-old triplets were born in 1997 after Elspas underwent a series of in vitro fertilization treatments for infertility. Her oldest child, 10, is the happy result of a prior ivf treatment round. Elspas worked hard to get her children, and is grateful to have them. But four, thanks very much, are plenty. The problem is that Elspas also has 14 embryos left over from the treatment that produced her 10-year-old. The embryos are stored in liquid nitrogen at a California frozen storage facility—she is not entirely sure where—while Elspas and her husband ponder what to do with them.

Give them away to another couple, to gestate and bear? Her own children’s full biological siblings—raised in a different family? Donate them to scientific research? Let them…finally…lapse? It is, she and her husband find, an intractable problem, one for which there is no satisfactory answer. So what they have done—thus far—is nothing. Nothing, that is, but agonize.

“I don’t have the heart to thaw them,” says Elspas, who works as media relations director for a multi-birth networking group called the Triplet Connection. “But then again, I don’t have the will to do something with them.”

Elspas is by no means alone, either in having frozen human embryos she and her husband must eventually figure out what to do with, or in the moral paralysis she feels, surveying the landscape of available choices. In fact, she is part of an explosively growing group. In 2002, the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology—the research arm for U.S. fertility doctors—decided to find out how many unused embryos had accumulated in the nation’s 430 fertility clinics. The rand consulting group, hired to do a head count, concluded that 400,000 frozen embryos existed—a staggering number, twice as large as previous estimates. Given that hundreds of thousands of ivf treatment rounds have since been performed, it seems fair to estimate that by now the number of embryos in limbo in the United States alone is closer to half a million.

This embryo glut is forcing many people to reconsider whatever they thought they thought about issues such as life and death and choice and reproductive freedom. It’s a dilemma that has been quietly building: The first American ivf baby was born in 1981, less than a decade after Roe v. Wade was decided. Thanks in part to Roe, fertility medicine in this country developed in an atmosphere of considerable reproductive freedom (read: very little government oversight), meaning, among other things, that responsibility for embryo disposition rests squarely with patients. The number of ivf rounds, or “cycles,” has grown to the point that in 2003 about 123,000 cycles were performed, to help some of the estimated 1 in 7 American couples who have difficulty conceiving naturally. Early on, it proved relatively easy to freeze a lab-created human embryo—which unlike, say, hamburger meat, can be frozen, and thawed, and refrozen, and thawed, and then used. (To be precise, the technical term is “pre-embryo,” or “conceptus”; a fertilized egg is not considered an embryo until about two weeks of development, and ivf embryos are frozen well before this point.) Over time—as fertility drugs have gotten more powerful and lab procedures more efficient—it has become possible to coax more and more embryos into being during the average cycle. Moreover, as doctors transfer fewer embryos back into patients, in an effort to reduce multiple births, more of the embryos made are subsequently frozen.

And so, far from going away, the accumulation of human embryos is likely to grow, and grow, and grow. And in growing, the embryo overstock is likely to change—or at least complicate—the way we collectively think about human life at its earliest stages, and morally what is the right thing to do with it. At some point, embryos may alter or even explode the reproductive landscape: It is ivf embryos, after all, that are at the center of the nation’s stem cell debate, which itself has prompted a new national conversation about life and reproductive liberty, creating new alliances as well as schisms. In 2001, as one of his first major domestic policy decisions, George W. Bush banned federal funding for labs developing new stem cell lines using leftover ivf embryos; then in May 2005, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill approving funding for stem cell research using these same embryos, setting the stage for an eventual conservative showdown. In the course of this debate, embryos have emerged as another tool for truly hardline conservatives looking for new ways to beat back abortion rights. Like “fetal rights” laws that seemingly protect unborn children from acts of homicide, “embryo rights” are being waved about as a weapon in the assault on abortion rights, as anti-abortion lawmakers talk about seizing control over frozen embryo stores; limiting the creation of new embryos; or both.

But the impact of the embryo is also taking place on a more subtle and personal level. The glut’s very existence illuminates how the newest reproductive technologies are complicating questions about life; issues that many people thought they had resolved are being revived and reconsidered, in a different emotional context. As with ultrasound technology—which permits parents to visualize a fetus in utero—ivf allows many patients to form an emotional attachment to a form of human life that is very early, it’s true, but still life, and still human. People bond with photos of three-day-old, eight-cell embryos. They ardently wish for them to grow into children. The experience can be transforming: “I was like, ‘I created these things, I feel a sense of responsibility for them,’” is how one ivf patient put it. Describing herself as staunchly pro-choice, this patient found that she could not rest until she located a person—actually, two people—willing to bring her excess embryos to term. The presence of embryos for whom (for which?) they feel a certain undefined moral responsibility presents tens of thousands of Americans with a dilemma for which nothing—nothing—has prepared them.

A new demographic is wrestling with questions initially posed by contraception and abortion. A world away from the exigencies, mitigating circumstances, and carefully honed ideologies that have grown up in and around U.S. abortion clinics, it is people like Janis Elspas who are being called upon to think, hard, about when life begins, and when it is—or is not—right to terminate it. They are in this position, ironically enough, not because they don’t want a family, but precisely because they do. Among the nation’s growing ranks of ivf patients, deciding the fate of frozen embryos is known as the “disposition decision,” and it is one of the hardest decisions patients face, so unexpectedly problematic that many decide, in the end, to punt, a choice that is only going to make the glut bigger, the moral problem more looming and unresolved.

“Are they people? Aren’t they people?”

To show just how difficult embryo disposition can be: Dr. Robert Nachtigall, a veteran San Francisco reproductive endocrinologist, directed a study of patients who had conceived using ivf together with egg donation, another rapidly growing niche of fertility medicine. As Nachtigall and his colleagues at the University of California-San Francisco were interviewing these parents, they were struck by comments made, separately, by several couples.

Hard as it was deciding whether to go ahead with egg donation, these parents said, it was harder still deciding the fate of their leftover embryos.

“Until recently, I don’t know if any of us were aware of the scope of the embryo dilemma,” Nachtigall told colleagues at the 2005 annual meeting held by the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (asrm), the trade group for fertility doctors. Struck by these unprompted revelations, he and fellow researchers decided to do a new study, this one looking explicitly at the way patients think about their unused, iced-down embryos. The study was published in 2005 in the journal Fertility and Sterility. Strikingly, Nachtigall found that even in one of the bluest regions of the country, which is to say, among people living in and around San Francisco, few were able to view a three-day-old laboratory embryo with anything like detachment. “Parents variously conceptualized frozen embryos as biological tissue, living entities, ‘virtual’ children having interests that must be considered and protected, siblings of their living children, genetic or psychological ‘insurance policies,’ and symbolic reminders of their past infertility,” his report noted. Many seemed afflicted by a kind of Chinatown syndrome, thinking of them simultaneously as: Children! Tissue! Children! Tissue!

An earlier study, conducted by psychologist Susan Klock and colleagues at the Northwestern University School of Medicine, found that many patients begin ivf with some notion about how they will dispose of surplus embryos. (The choices come down to five: use them; donate them for research; donate them to another infertile person; freeze them indefinitely; or have them thawed, that is, quietly disposed of.) What Klock also reported was that many couples found their thinking transformed once treatment was over. More than half the couples who had planned to dispose of their embryos decided, instead, to use them, or donate them. Conversely, seven of the eight couples who had planned to donate them to research decided to use them, or dispose of them. Nearly all who had planned to donate their embryos to another couple found that, when push came to shove, they could not relinquish their potential genetic offspring. In short: Almost all reconsidered, not in any way that could be neatly summarized. All in all, 71 percent changed their minds about what to do. Also striking: Only about half of patients with embryos stored for more than three years could be located. The rest were incommunicado.

Nachtigall’s study elaborated on these findings. Couples, he found, were confused yet deeply affected by the responsibility of deciding what to do with their embryos. They wanted to do the right thing. All of the 58 couples in his study had children as a result of treatment, so they knew, well, what even three-day-old embryos can and do grow into. (Nachtigall is currently studying a much larger sample of couples, where both egg and sperm come from the parents. It should answer the question of whether couples who use donor eggs are in any way distinct in their thinking about embryos.) “Some saw them as biological material, but most recognized the potential for life,” Nachtigall told colleagues at the asrm meeting. “For many couples, it seems there is no good decision; yet they still take it seriously morally.”

For virtually all patients, he found, the disposition decision was torturous, the end result unpredictable. “Nothing feels right,” he reported patients telling him. “They literally don’t know what the right, the good, the moral thing is.” In the fluid process of making a decision—any decision—some try to talk themselves into a clinical detachment. “Little lives, that’s how I thought about them,” said one woman. “But you have to switch gears and think, ‘They’re not lives, they’re cells. They’re science.’ That’s kind of what I had to switch to.” Others were not able to make that switch, thinking of their embryos as almost sentient. “My husband talked about donating them to research, but there is some concern that this would not be a peaceful way to go,” said one woman. Another said, “You start saying to yourself, ‘Every one of these is potentially a life.’”

Many were troubled, Nachtigall said, by the notion of donating embryos to research or to another couple, and thereby losing control over their fate and well-being; they seemed to feel a parental obligation to protect their embryos. “I couldn’t give my children to someone else to raise, and I couldn’t give these embryos to someone else to bear,” said one woman. Another woman described her embryos as a psychic insurance policy, providing “intangible solace” against the fundamental parental terror that an existing child might die. “What if [my daughter] got leukemia?” said yet another, who considered her frozen embryos a potential source of treatment. A patient put the same notion more bluntly: “You have the idea that in a warehouse somewhere there’s a replacement part should yours get lost, or there is something wrong with them.”

For others, embryos carried a price tag that made them seem like a consumer good; a few parents considered destroying them to be a “waste” of all the money spent on treatment.

“You weigh what’s best,” Nachtigall quoted one parent as saying, but what’s best is not, often, clear. This parent continued: “Are they people? Aren’t they people? In part of my mind, they’re potential people, but the point is, it seems odd to me to keep them frozen forever. It seems like not facing the issue.” A patient who had decided to donate embryos for research said, “We’ve agreed that it’s the right thing for us to do, but the final step is to get the forms notarized, and we haven’t done it. I will honestly say that it will be a day of mourning.”

For those couples who did reach a decision, the resolution came as a great relief, bringing with it, his report noted, “a profound sense of completeness and resolution.”

Nachtigall also found that patients sometimes disposed of embryos in novel ways that fell short of actual plug-pulling. In a version of the rhythm method of contraception, he learned, some patients (though none of the ones in his study) solved their dilemma through the laborious—and expensive—process of having leftover embryos transferred into the woman’s uterus at a time in her monthly cycle when implantation would be unlikely. Others buried embryos. Still others could not bring themselves to dispose of them at all. “We’ll have a couple more pregnancies and we’ll just grow the whole lot,” one father told Nachtigall and his team.

Of the 58 couples Nachtigall and his group interviewed, the average couple had seven frozen embryos in storage. The average embryo had been in storage for four years. Even after that much time had elapsed, 72 percent had not decided what to do, and a number echoed the words of one patient: “We can’t talk about it.” The embryos keep alive the question of whether to have more children, a topic on which many spouses disagree. “I still have six in the bank,” said one woman, who had not given up the idea of bearing them. “They call to me. I hate to talk about it. But they call to me.” Her words are reminiscent of a comment made by the singer Celine Dion, who, after undergoing ivf in 2001, later said, in describing her plans for a second child: “This frozen embryo that is in New York is my child waiting to be brought to life.”

“Like pets, or natural resources, or pieces of art”

It should be noted that the confusion felt by parents is shared by the minds who guide American jurisprudence. As University of Wisconsin law professor and bioethicist Alta Charo pointed out at the 2005 asrm meeting, the embryo issue tends to emerge as a point of dispute in divorce cases. Tracing the confused path of judicial decision-making, Charo offered one situation in which a Tennessee court ruled frozen embryos to be potential children, or effectively so, and—in the court’s traditional role of acting in the best interests of children in custody suits–awarded a batch of disputed embryos to the parent who intended to bring them to term. That decision was reversed by a second court, which chose to treat the embryos as property and proposed dividing them, like furniture, between the ex-spouses. But the state’s Supreme Court ultimately awarded the embryos to the spouse who did not intend to use them. In general, Charo said, courts tend to this latter approach: They take pains to avoid situations where one person will bring the embryos to term against the wishes of the ex-partner, privileging the right not to procreate over the desire to do so.

For the most part, courts often do regard embryos as property, but property with an elevated moral status, “like pets, or natural resources, or pieces of art,” as Charo put it. In Louisiana, however, embryos have been designated as “juridical persons.” “No one knows what this means,” Charo said, comparing the status of Louisiana embryos to that formerly assigned to slaves: not fully human under the law, but deserving of some rights. One thing “juridical person” does mean is that in Louisiana, fertility clinics are forbidden to dispose of embryos. They are directed to act in the best interests of the embryos, whatever that may be: a kind of guardian ad litem of the embryo.

Similarly, the federal government, in its role as regulator, has found the embryo a slippery creature to define. In 2002, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services began distributing grants to groups willing to raise public awareness about what the Bush administration likes to call “embryo adoption.” Also known as “embryo donation,” this is a process whereby embryos are relinquished by whoever created them and handed over to another couple, or person. In most states, this is essentially a property transfer, not an adoption, and advocates for the infertile, as well as old-line reproductive rights groups, fear the use of the word “adoption” is one more attempt to confer humanhood on the embryo, a backdoor anti-abortion sally. They are right: To dramatize his opposition to federal funding for stem cell research, Bush in May 2005 posed with a group of “Snowflakes” babies, children who started life as leftover ivf embryos and were donated to other couples, thanks to the brokerage of an explicitly Christian, explicitly pro-life embryo adoption group called Snowflakes.

Inconveniently for the president, at that very moment the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was in the process of categorizing the human embryo as biological tissue, thereby putting into effect strict disease-testing requirements that would make embryo adoption, or donation, impossible. Clinics feared they would need to close down their donation programs. At the last moment, an exemption for embryos was carved out, and embryo donations were permitted to go forward. The infertility lobby was delighted and a little smug, not just because doctors and patients’ groups support embryo donation (which they do), but because “tissue” remains the designation conferred on embryos by the fda. Like abortion rights groups, the infertility field likes this designation, which helps preserve for it total reproductive freedom by encouraging the notion of the embryo as a multicelled clump of tissue.

But the idea of potential personhood has clearly been implanted, so to speak; human embryos are going to continue to be a political battleground as anti-abortion advocates include them in the umbrella concept of “pre-born life.” During last year’s stem cell debate, then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay referred to embryos as “living, distinct human beings,” while a conservative columnist referred to them as “microscopic Americans.” The president calls them “nascent human life.” As Slate’s Will Saletan has pointed out, pro-life lawmakers periodically threaten all-out war on the reproductive liberty enjoyed by ivf patients; Republican Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey hinted at this when he said, “The public policy we craft should ensure that the best interests of newly created human life is protected.” Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) has suggested that the government should limit the number of embryos created to one or two per ivf cycle.

Unnerved, advocacy groups for the infertile and those who serve them called a press conference in 2005, where Sean Tipton, spokesman for asrm, said that “patients control and make the decision about what happens with those embryos, and that’s the way it is now, and it’s important that that’s the way it stays.” The problem is that many patients do view embryos as nascent human life and, paralyzed by this thought, cannot decide how to decide.

It’s an issue that affects anybody with an interest in reproductive issues—which is to say, pretty much every American. Some think that the embryo glut may offer the next serious challenge to Roe. “For the moment couples still have dispositional control, but I predict that that is going to be challenged very soon,” Alta Charo said at the 2005 meeting, speaking to doctors and fertility clinic staffers. Arguing that pro-life advocates can taste “total victory” after “an ongoing nibble-at-the-edges battle” involving statehouse measures like informed consent and mandatory waiting periods, Charo predicted that somewhere, soon, “some obscure legislature” will propose to seize control of frozen embryos, the measure will be challenged, and the ensuing lawsuit will end up in the U.S. Supreme Court. Traditionally, she pointed out, abortion rights involves weighing the interests of the woman against those of the fetus, and up to now the woman’s interests have been considered paramount. But now the interests of the embryo, or fetus, or potential child, can be separated out. This, she said, is a watershed development.

For those who want to test the core of Roe v. Wade, Charo told the fertility specialists, “you guys are the perfect opportunity to separate the question of embryos and best interests, and the woman’s right to direct her body. You take a law like Louisiana’s, saying that personhood begins at conception, and that you cannot discard embryos. Now the Supreme Court has the ability to look at the status of the embryo, not as compared with the woman’s right to control what she wants to do with her body. There is no bodily interest. It’s entirely possible that the first real challenge to Roe will be looking at the embryo in isolation. The question about discard is very, very important. This will be where they start their litigation strategy, to chip away at Roe.”

It should be pointed out, however, that even anti-abortion conservatives are not united in their ideas about the embryo and whether it has rights, or best interests, or even the potential for life. Once a person contemplates an embryo—really looks at it, under a microscope or in a photograph—his or her opinion is often changed, and not in any consistent or predictable direction. This is true for pro-choice and pro-life alike. While researching a book on assisted reproduction and its impact, I interviewed California Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a reliably anti-abortion Republican member of the House. Rohrabacher was one of some 50 Republicans who defied the president by voting in favor of federal funding for stem cell research using surplus ivf embryos. For Rohrabacher it was not abstract: He and his wife, Rhonda, went through ivf treatment and have triplets as a result.

Going through that process, Rohrabacher told me, fundamentally changed his thinking about life and its origins. “For a long time I’ve been pro-life, and I still consider myself to be pro-life,” he reflected, sitting on the front porch of his Huntington Beach bungalow, which, inside, had been taken over by the demands of triplet care. “I have done a lot of soul-searching but also a lot of rethinking about reality, and what’s going on here, and I have come to the conclusion that I’m…first, I’m still pro-life. But I always said that life begins at conception. But…I was always predicating that on the idea that life begins at conception when conception begins in a woman’s body.”

Now, Rohrabacher realizes, conception can take place outside the human body. That, for him, is a meaningful difference. The crux of the matter: Is the embryo in the womb, or is it in a lab? “I don’t think that the potential for human life exists in a human embryo until it’s implanted in a human body. So you are not destroying a human life by basically not using a fertilized egg. These are not potential human lives until they are implanted in a body. Left alone, they will not become a human being. When they are implanted in a female body, they have a chance to become a human being, so I still would be opposed to abortion.”

“People do not want to inherit embryos”

Less examined has been the fact that the embryo glut presents an immediate and pressing problem for the very people who helped create it: fertility doctors. In clinics around the country, doctors are at their wits’ end trying to figure out what to do with embryos that have fallen, willy-nilly, under their moral, medical, and, possibly, legal purview. The way this happens is: When patients agree to have embryos frozen, they sign forms stating what should be done with the embryos should the patients divorce, disappear, or stop paying storage fees. After treatment has concluded, many patients eventually do stop paying, disappear, move, leave no forwarding address. In such cases, doctors are, at a certain point, technically free to dispose of abandoned embryos. But many are reluctant to take that step. They are terrified that at some point a patient will come back and sue them for—well, for something.

“Nobody does it [destroys abandoned embryos],” says Alan DeCherney, the editor of Fertility and Sterility and a reproductive endocrinologist who is now at the National Institutes of Health. “It’s a hot topic. People think the risk of holding them is less than the risk of destroying them.”

And the risk of holding them is considerable. “I have tons of embryos, and I can’t track down the owners,” said one Los Angeles doctor, Vicken Sahakian of the Pacific Fertility Center, sitting in his posh Wilshire Boulevard office. Sahakian practically had his head in his hands, thinking about all those embryos. “It’s one of the main problems I have. I have thousands of embryos from patients who have been through this program for, what, 10-, 12-plus years, changing addresses, and never called back, never paid storage fees—you can’t track them down.” Sahakian does the best he can to whittle down his own embryo glut; he runs a strong embryo donation program, encouraging couples to donate embryos to other patients and handling the logistics. He has also hired a collection agency to try to track down patients and force them to make a resolution. His “biggest nightmare,” he said, is that he will be unable to sell his practice when he is ready to retire, because no doctor will want to buy a practice that comes with a closetful of unclaimed embryos and the vague, terrible responsibility they entail. “The person buying it does not want to buy the embryos. That’s the rule,” he said. “People do not want to inherit embryos. So what do you do with them? I have embryos that have been here since 1992.”

The overages have grown to such proportions that companies now exist, solely, to manage embryo inventory. Back in 1990, Russell Bierbaum, who at the time worked for a sperm bank, had a vision of the future, and what he saw was: lots and lots of frozen embryos. So he founded a company called ReproTech, which can be hired to assume and maintain doctors’ embryo inventory, as well as handle transport, a tricky process in and of itself. (What box do you fill out, exactly, on the FedEx form? “Warning: Contains microscopic Americans”?) It took a while for the idea to come to fruition, he says, but now business is booming: He has two facilities, in Minnesota and Florida, and is constantly adding new storage tanks. Bierbaum prefers to assume responsibility for embryos soon after their creation. His employees stay in touch with patients, keeping addresses current, periodically calling to say hello and review the options. In a few instances, he says, he will take over abandoned embryos and attempt to track patients down. It is therefore people like ReproTech staff members—rather than, say, ministers or psychologists—who often are the ones discussing, with patients, fundamental questions touching on birth and death and life and reproduction, all the essential questions of humanity. “We end up being the counselors without the credentials,” acknowledges Bierbaum, “just answering the questions, being available.”

It’s hard to know how, exactly, the embryo overstock will go away. The rand study found that only about 3 percent of unused embryos have been slated to be donated for research. In England, unused embryos are destroyed after five years, though this government policy did not occur without controversy; the first time embryos were set to be destroyed, a group of pro-life advocates staged protests. The deadline was extended, but eventually the embryos were destroyed. Other countries, such as Germany and Italy, forbid the freezing of embryos. In those countries, every embryo made must be implanted. Both of these ideas are of course anathema to American fertility advocacy groups and to the medical field, because it would open the door to that dreaded phenomenon, governmental control over human life and its disposition.

So what are we going to do with our embryo glut? Robert Nachtigall believes that with better patient counseling and logistical coordination between fertility clinics and research labs, many more unused embryos could be directed toward stem cell research, and that many patients would be happy to know that their embryos are being used to find a cure for afflictions such as Parkinson’s disease and juvenile diabetes.

“I think it’s a mistake to call it a glut,” says Nachtigall. “I mean, these embryos are created in a process as hundreds of thousands of couples attempt to overcome infertility, and their presence is perhaps an unanticipated side effect of the use of advanced reproductive technology. But there is nothing inherently negative or wrong about their existence, and as we turn our attention to them, we may find that indeed they could be a tremendous resource for science, the country, and for mankind, for that matter.”

The problem is, few fertility clinics counsel patients about disposition, at least not at any length; and because of the ban on federal funding, few labs can receive human embryos for research. Nor has the fertility profession served itself or its patients entirely well, encouraging the idea that embryos are multicelled clumps of tissue. They are multicelled clumps of tissue, it’s true, but they are also more complicated and more emotionally fraught. One of the powerful findings of Nachtigall’s study was how isolated patients felt in making the disposition decision; how they longed for counseling, advice, some sort of out-loud moral conversation between people who had been through, and thought through, the same issues. Whether the reproductive rights community might ever hold such a grand, collective conversation seems unlikely, in this charged political atmosphere. But it would be useful, to put it mildly.

Meanwhile, the technology itself is so new that nobody knows what the expiration date on embryos might be. Might all these embryos become nonviable and nonproblematic? Unlikely. Recently, a San Francisco woman gave birth using an embryo that had been frozen for 13 years. So patients like Janis Elspas continue to agonize over their aging embryonic stores. An Orthodox Jew, Elspas believes her religion would permit her to quietly terminate what are, basically, little more than fertilized eggs. “But considering all the pain and suffering we went through to get those embryos, I still consider it the destruction of a God-given gift.”

After weighing all the options, and rejecting them, one patient says wryly, but a little wearily: “Maybe when I die, they’ll just bury my embryos with me.”

 

 

Q: Since you're in Washington, why don't we start with the issue of net neutrality. Some Internet service providers want to stop treating all websites the same, and start charging extra fees for those who want to send content to users quickly. Much of the tech industry is backing legislation to prevent this. What's Cisco's stand?

A: Our country is running behind in broadband build-out. I'm interested in our country building out its infrastructure. For that to occur, I differ from some of my tech peers. My view is regulation is not the answer. If you don't allow companies to build out with a high probability of a reasonable return, shareholders will punish them for building out.

Q: What about the argument that we'd wind up with a two-tiered Internet and start-ups won't have the same ability to reach consumers as wealthy companies such as Google?

A: I wouldn't expect companies to pay for high-speed access — consumers will. If I want to watch a ballgame from multiple angles and perhaps telepresence across the country with my brother ... to expect that free of charge is not realistic.

Q: Microsoft last month announced plans for an office telephone system that runs over a computer network, sending phone calls much like e-mails. Cisco dominates that fast-growing market today. Are you worried?

A: It's a tremendous compliment to us ... (and) it does not surprise us.

Microsoft will be a partner at times and a competitor at times. This (area) is where the majority of communications growth is going to occur, and you'll see a lot of companies moving into it.

Q: How about the consumer space? Cisco recently bought Scientific-Atlanta, a maker of cable set-top boxes for Time Warner and others. Is home networking panning out for you?

A: We've learned that entering a market you don't understand by building products from scratch does not work. So we entered it by (buying) Linksys. We have over 50% retail market share. Combine that with Scientific-Atlanta.

Video is hard. Only two players do it well, Motorola and Scientific-Atlanta.

While we'd love to partner with (Motorola CEO) Ed Zander, it was too hard to move at the speed that was needed. So we bought Scientific-Atlanta.

Q: We asked readers of Kevin Maney's blog if they had any questions for you. One brought up Internet filtering in China. Cisco equipment is used by countries such as China and Saudi Arabia, where the Internet is censored. What do you say about that?

A: We do not help any government modify our equipment or our code, not even our own. Whatever anyone does, they do off standard capabilities. It's like anything you have — like the telephone. It can be used for good or bad.

Make no mistake: The Chinese leadership understood that when they introduced the Internet, it would bring communications, capitalism and — my term — democracy over time. The benefits far outweigh any disadvantages.

Q: Another reader question: Will Cisco stock ever go above $20?