The uselessness of the appendix was once deemed one of the most sure things in medical science. Now, it turns out, that may be wrong. From the abstract in the Journal of Theoretical Biology:APPENDIX: RESEARCH FINDS ROLE FOR ORGAN LONG THOUGHT USELESS Long denigrated as vestigial or useless, the . . . . Continue Reading »
I think Bobby Schindler is right.There have been a lot of stories of late about how supposedly vegetative patients could understand, or of “miraculous” awakenings by people who doctors were sure would never react consciously again. Bobby, Terri Schiavo’s brother, has noticed that . . . . Continue Reading »
As readers of SHS know, I am pretty disgusted with the KC Star and its political reporter Kit Wagar, based on my belief that the paper in general, and Wagar in specific, are biased in their reporting of the great stem cell debate in Missouri.Further fuel to this particular fire can be seen in the . . . . Continue Reading »
The NIH will soon be funding research into obtaining pluripotent stem cells from non embryonic sources. Wherever one stands on the Bush funding policy or human cloning research, this should be cause for celebration. After all, don’t the scientists always say we should research all areas of the . . . . Continue Reading »
A herd of Indian elephants has destroyed a village. From the story:About 100 wild elephants have converged on a river island in northeast India, demolishing homes, feasting on sugarcane and panicking residents, officials said Saturday. Thousands of villagers were using firecrackers and bonfires to . . . . Continue Reading »
I have this theory; well not even a theory, perhaps better stated, a mere notion. I believe that human cloning is profoundly and intrinsically wrong in that it reduces human life to a mere malleable and exploitable commodity. It is to treat human life as no different than a corn crop, a copper mine, . . . . Continue Reading »
Well, my little blog entry of yesterday taking the MO Secretary of State to task for bias for the Orwellian language she is using to describe the proposed ballot initiative to enact a real cloning ban in Missouri made a political blog at the paper, byline Kit Wagar. Here is part of what Wagar . . . . Continue Reading »
The animal rights movement is profoundly anti-human in my opinion. Some of this is explicit, as I have discussed. But much of it is implicit, in advocating policies that would prevent us from making proper and humane use of animals resulting in great human harm.One example of such good is the . . . . Continue Reading »
Readers of SHS and those who keep up with disability rights issues will remember “Ashley’s case,” which I covered extensively (for example here, here. and in NRO here). The controversy concerned a little disabled girl given a non therapeutic hysterectomy, mastectomy, and hormones . . . . Continue Reading »
This story gets the eye roll of the year award: The University of Maastricht in the Netherlands is awarding a doctorate to a researcher who wrote a paper on marriages between humans and robots.David Levy, a British artificial intelligence researcher at the college, wrote in his thesis, . . . . Continue Reading »