Leftist billionaire George Soros bankrolled a study for the medical journal The Lancet that claimed that 650,000 people have been killed in the Iraq war, a number several times larger than other estimates of Iraqi war dead. The Lancet never bothered to tell its readers of Soros's involvement in paying for the study. Les Roberts, the antiwar professor who ran the project, told the Times of London: "In retrospect, it was probably unwise to have taken money that could have looked like it would result in a political slant. I am adamant this could not have affected the outcome of the research." What if Richard Mellon Scaife, rather than George Soros, funded a Lancet study on Iraqi war dead? Would the Lancet accept the research, or deem it tainted from the outset? Would Roberts still maintain that the money could not have affected the outcome of the study?

It seems that the tainting influence of money is everywhere in science these days. I watched a distrubing Frontline the other day about the rise in diagnosing children (as young as two) with bipolar disorder and the prescribing powerful (and therefore, dangerous) drugs for them that have only been tested in adults. The leading "experts" who are pushing these diagnoses are, surprise, being funded by the pharmaceutical companies.

I saw that program too. Very disturbing. Obviously science can be bought whether it’s for the benefit of politics or business. And we're seeing more and more of it.

For those familiar with the movie Blade Runner, a maybe prescient quote from Dr. Eldon Tyrell, head of the fictional high-tech biocorp concerned with the production of life-like androids: 'Commerce is our goal here at Tyrell. "More human than human" is our motto'.

As human life becomes an ever cheaper ‘commodity’, this could apply to real humans today.