User:CraigJoslyn792

It has long been clear to me that the BBC is a very biased broadcasting organisation which takes a strong pro-establishment line on almost every issue.bbcamerica.com I used to work for the BBC regularly - presenting programmes on both radio and television.bbcamerica.com But I don't get invited to appear much on the BBC these days. Review copies of my books are sent to programme editors and presenters but, on the whole, we would get as much response if we sent copies to the Man in the Moon. It has, for some time now, also been pretty clear to me that the BBC does not like to broadcast uncomfortably trenchant criticism of the European Union. My book England Our England is probably the biggest selling book on politics to have been published in England in recent years. And yet I have discussed it just once on the BBC, on a late night local radio programme. I am not the only person to have noticed that the BBC takes an unusually partisan line on the EU. Naturally, representatives of the BBC are invariably quick to defend their organisation. I suspect that some of them really believe that they are impartial and it is certainly a fact that they often fail to realise just how much their bias is showing. The problem is that the BBC's internal environment, their in-house culture, is terribly biased towards Labour and all its best-established enthusiasms. Any honest broadcaster would have left the BBC in disgust years ago.bbcamerica.com The European Union is important to Labour and so it is important to the BBC too. Most BBC staff members are recruited through advertisements which appear exclusively in left-wing pro-Labour newspapers such as The Guardian and the organisation grows and grooms its own managers instead of recruiting from outside. Inevitably, most of the people who work for the BBC are Guardian readers. There are uncomfortable and unacceptable links between BBC staff and the Labour Party. One BBC presenter and her company has received £600,000 in public money since Labour took over the Government. The payments included hosting a one day conference on tourism, and making a film of the disastrous Scottish parliament project. Is it really surprising, therefore, that the BBC ends up supporting the EU and refusing to allow the critics of the EU fair access to its airtime? Is it surprising that BBC staff invariably seem frightened of producing anything likely to upset the establishment? Was it really surprising when one well-known presenter referred to the Labour Party as `we'? Most BBC staff may not be stupid enough to endorse one party but they don't even realise that their prejudices are prejudices. They simply regard their views as `right'.bbcamerica.com The BBC produces no real investigative journalism and no consumer protection. The organisation is plump, complacent and infinitely pro-establishment; full of people looking over their shoulders, terribly pleased with themselves and scared witless that their comfy sinecure may end. The ultimate insult, of course, is that it is impossible to listen to the radio or watch television in England without paying a hefty annual fee to the BBC. Where else in the world do the citizens have to pay to be indoctrinated? Does no one outside the BBC realise that any broadcaster which is totally dependent upon the establishment and the Government of the day for its very existence must end up as no more than a tool for both. Although the BBC gets its income from a tax on the public (whether they watch its programmes or not) the BBC is effectively a state owned broadcaster. It certainly acts like one. No one with a brain would expect to turn on the BBC to listen to the news. The BBC is a good old-fashioned state broadcaster. After the introduction of Holly, Jessica, Ellie, and Georgie, the first episode continues to examine the early stages of development. Continuing with the first episode of the documentary, the film discusses what occurs at two hundred hours after conception. Beginning at two hundred hours, changes are occurring in each cell of an embryo that the documentary claims can possibly determine the length of life an embryo will have. In the film, host Mosley travels to Keneba, Gambia, where Swiss researchers perform a seventy-year-long research study. The purpose of the study is to determine if the time during which the embryo is conceived can affect how long an individual lives after birth. The researchers compare individuals from birth to death who were conceived in the dry season, which starts in December and ends in June, and individuals conceived in the wet season, which starts in July and ends in November. In the dry season, mothers eat more calorie-rich grains compared to the mothers who conceive in the wet season, who eat more leafy greens. Once the fetuses are born, the research team then monitors them from birth, throughout childhood, and into old age. As Mosley describes, the researchers found that there were no differences in the two groups of children until the age of fifteen. At the age of fifteen, however, researchers claim that individuals conceived in the dry season were less able to fight infections. The researchers argue that leafy greens, which pregnant women ate during the wet season, provided a mixture of chemicals that bound to strands of DNA. Those chemicals permanently changed the activity levels of genes important in regulating the immune system which, in turn, decreased the lifespan of the individuals conceived in the dry season. Following an examination of the research study in Keneba, the first episode of the documentary continues to discuss the case of a woman named Melanie Gaydos. The first episode of the documentary uses the case of Gaydos to discuss what happens to the fetus within the first fifteen days after conception. Before day fifteen, cells in a fetus are identical, but at day fifteen, cells start to become more specialized. After day fifteen, cells transform into over four hundred different types that make up every part of the body. According to the documentary, any errors that occur at that point can have serious consequences, such as ectodermal dysplasia. Gaydos, an international model, was born with the genetic disorder ectodermal dysplasia. As explained in the first episode, the genetic disorder affects the development of the skin, hair, teeth, and nails. In the average fetus, there are three layers of specialized cells. Cells that build the gut and liver are on the bottom layer, whereas the cells that become the muscles, kidneys, bones, and blood are on the middle layer. On the top layer are the cells that become the skin, hair, teeth, and brain. In Gaydos’s case, the top layer did not develop as expected. Gaydos’s skin is highly sensitive, while her hair grew inwards, and her teeth crumbled. As the film notes, physicians stated they had never seen a condition like hers before. However, the documentary reports that physicians hypothesize that a mutated gene could have caused the condition. After the cells become more specialized on day fifteen, the first episode continues and discusses what happens in the first couple of weeks after conception. The middle of the first episode focuses on the first few weeks after conception. Within a couple of weeks, the embryo has thousands of cells, and the genes that promote growth turn on. In the documentary, Mosley meets a girl named Nell from Brecon Beacons, Wales, who inherited an extra growth gene from her father. The average embryo inherits one growth gene from their mother and one growth gene from their father. The two growth genes balance one another out, and the embryo grows at an average rate. According to the documentary, because Nell inherited two growth genes from her father, she grew at a faster rate in the womb compared to the average embryo. Nell also produces an extra growth hormone, IGF2. The extra growth hormone can cause an accelerated growth during development and childhood. As the first part of the documentary continues to discuss how a mutation in the embryo can affect individuals for a lifetime, Mosley meets NBA player Foye in Denver, Colorado. Foye’s heart is located on the right side of his chest, compared to the normal position in the left side. In addition, Foye’s liver is on the left side, compared to the normal position in the right side. The odds of organs developing on the wrong side of the human body is one in 10,000 live births. Nineteen days after conception, the location of the internal organs is determined by cilia, hair-like structures. Cilia are found on several hundred cells located in the middle of the embryo. On day nineteen, the cilia start to spin clockwise, which creates a leftward current in the fluid that surrounds the cilia. The current switches on genes located on the left side of the cell. Once the left side genes are activated, the genes indicate where the organs need to go in the body. In Foye’s case, the cilia never started to spin. Therefore, his organs did not have proper instructions on where to go inside the body. Instead, the genes on the right side activated and the organs ended up on the opposite side of the body, compared to the average person’s organs. After the introduction of Foye, the first episode explains what occurs between three weeks and eight weeks after conception. As The First Eight Weeks of The Countdown to Life: The Extraordinary Making of You nears its end, Mosley explains what happens between week three and week eight of development. At week three in the womb, the embryo is shaped like a flat disk. The flat disk folds together and creates a tube that later becomes the spinal cord. After the formation of the tube, a collection of muscle cells at the center of the embryo starts to assemble to form the heart. As emphasized in the documentary, the heart is smaller than a grain of sand, yet the fetus has a heartbeat. At week five, an ultrasound, an imaging technique to produce images of the fetus, can detect the fetus’s heartbeat. According to the documentary, after the fetal heartbeat is detected at week five, the heart will continuously pump blood throughout the body. One week later, at six weeks, the fetus begins to look somewhat human, as body structures such as hands start to emerge. At that time, the two hands resemble two flat paddles. Later, at thirty-eight days, the cells around the flat paddles slowly die away, which creates the hands’ fingers. Following the formation of the hands, the inner ear is formed at eight weeks, which gives humans a sense of balance. The second episode, Against the Odds, of Countdown to Life: The Extraordinary Making of You, looks at the middle sixteen weeks of fetal development. The second episode notes that during the middle sixteen weeks of development, the fetus starts to become an individual. The fetus’s face is formed, skin color and fingerprints are developed, and hormones mold its personality. At eleven weeks, the fetus’s arms and legs begin moving, while the body starts to develop the dominant hand, the preferred hand to perform motor tasks with. In addition, the nervous system, consisting of the brain, spinal cord, and nerves that connect the body, starts to function in the fetus. Two weeks later, at week thirteen, the fetus begins to develop a skin color. Prior to week thirteen, the fetus appeared transparent, but with the production of a substance called melanin, the fetus develops a skin tone. During week fourteen, the fetus begins to prepare for life after birth by developing an immune system that becomes fully active. During week fifteen, the fetus’s brain creates all the cells of the cerebral hemisphere of the brain, which controls speech, thought, emotions, and other functions. In the middle of episode two, Against the Odds, Mosley explains the effects of testosterone on the fetus. Both male and female fetuses receive a dose of the hormone testosterone at week fifteen.