This story is unremarkable—in the sense that adult stem cell advances are so ubiquitous. Apparently human adult stem cells have rebuilt muscle tissue in mice, moving the technology toward potential treatment for muscular dystrophy. Not yet ready for human trials, apparently, but definitely . . . . Continue Reading »
Science is becoming so unscientific these days, akin in some minds to ideology—or even religion. Lest you doubt it, consider changes being contemplated by the new “pro science” Kansas Board of Education. In essence, members are planning to do to the less savory history of science, . . . . Continue Reading »
It looks as if we are beginning to enter an era of age discrimination in health care. As is usually the case in matters such as this, the perniciousness enters on the back of what may be deemed a reasonable thesis: In this case, people who will enjoy transplanted organs longer should have first . . . . Continue Reading »
The Wall Street Journal (no link available) reports that scientists are treating wounded Iraqi War veterans with a substance from pigs that seems to resurrect the ability to regenerate organs and other body parts—an ability possessed by fetuses but lost after birth. In this case, the . . . . Continue Reading »
In this Daily Standard column, David Klinghoffer, my colleague at the Discovery Institute, notes that it has been 100 years since eugenic sterilization was first legalized in the USA. He also points out that while Darwin opposed discriminating against the weak, the pernicious eugenics theory was . . . . Continue Reading »
60 Minutes had a horrendous story on tonight’s show of a mentally ill prisoner, in jail for shop lifting, who was chained to his bed for many hours each day and allowed to dehydrate to death by clearly negligent prison personnel. This is a shameful example of how we often abuse the mentally . . . . Continue Reading »
Talk about a bitter irony: Haitian slaves were among the first to liberate themselves (from ownership by French colonists), and yet, on the island that once stood as a beacon encouraging others to strive toward freedom, children are held as “domestic chattels.” From the story in the . . . . Continue Reading »
A UK doctor wants to legalize kidney markets to ease the organ shortage. Of course, people in his social class will never threaten their own health by being sellers. They will be buyers. Opening the door to exploiting the poor for their organs is a new form of . . . . Continue Reading »
When I had the great honor of interviewing Dame Cecily Saunders, founder of the modern hospice movement, she criticized the American “way” of hospice, noting that unlike the UK, we had created a system where hospice is seen as an “abandon hope all ye who enter here,” . . . . Continue Reading »
A bi-partisan bill is being introduced in the House of Representatives to outlaw the patenting of human genes. It doesn’t have a number yet. Here is what it states: “Notwithstanding any other provision of law, no patent may be obtained for a nucleotide sequence, or its functions or . . . . Continue Reading »
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