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There is nothing like an advance in human cloning to grab everyone's attention. So Wednesday’s news that scientists at the have and produced apparently viable stem cells has the whole world watching.
China has long been a prime destination for those in need of transplants. Transplant “tourists” from around the world, frustrated by the long wait lists in their own countries, find the guarantee of a transplant offered by many Chinese hospitals and brokers a cheaper and quicker solution to their organ failure. But China does not have an official organ donation system for getting organs from the dead. Since there are not nearly enough organs to meet local needs, much less the demands of all these rich visitors, . This is a reprehensible practice that must be stopped. For one thing, consent from these prisoners is non-existent or questionable. And the Chinese government has admitted that some executions may have even be timed for the convenience of a transplant recipient.
Researchers have created a remarkable portrait of life for those with Down syndrome — and the people who love them. Through the conducted by Children’s Hospital Boston, the Down syndrome experience looks far different — and far happier — than the one most of us are used to picturing.Most parents who answered the survey said they were proud of their child with Down syndrome, felt their outlook on life was more positive because of the experience — and had no regrets about having the child. Those with Down syndrome and their siblings also reported an overwhelmingly positive quality of life. Still, as heartening as these findings are, I don’t think they will make a bit of difference to parents deciding to end pregnancies once Down syndrome is discovered in a fetus.
Vaccines were the biggest losers in Monday’s GOP presidential candidate’s debate, specifically those that are intended to prevent cervical cancer. Republican hopefuls Michele Bachmann of Minnesota and Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania piled on Texas Gov. Rick Perry about the alleged horror of the government doing what it can to help vaccinate young women.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry went far outside mainstream medicine last month — an irresponsible choice that endangered himself and anyone who might follow his lead. He underwent a procedure where stem cells, made from fat taken from his body, were put into his bloodstream to see if they might find their way to help heal the bones in his back.
Scientists have been making rapid progress in identifying which of your genetic traits may be associated with the risk of getting a wide variety of diseases. That’s a good thing.
Those who believe the million or more abortions each year in the U.S. are immoral seem willing to go to any length to restrict, discourage or hinder them — even, in some cases, if it means risking a woman's health or violating core values of health care.
No one likes a bully. Intimidation is a rotten way to get what you want. Yet, incredibly, that is exactly what some in the stem cell therapy industry are trying to do to a group of scientists trying to speak up about the often fraudulent nature of their business.There has been a lot of publicity about stem cells in biomedical research over the past few years. Only a few days ago a was given an artificial windpipe made from a synthetic scaffold that had been seeded with his own stem cells. Yankee pitcher Bartolo Colon, who suffered from a series of arm and shoulder injuries that sidelined him for more than a year, found his way to a little-known clinic in the Dominican Republic to pursue an emerging treatment. He had stem cells, made from his fat and bone marrow, . This highly experimental procedure has been shown to work so far in race horses. Colon has been back pitching and doing well.Yet despite the promising trachea transplant and the more fringe adventures of the Yankee star, stem cell transplants of any
You don’t need to be a doctor or scientist to see that Americans are getting fatter and fatter. We are the United States of obesity. Twelve states now have obesity rates above 30 percent, a just-released report from Trust for America's Health shows.
Jared Lee Loughner, the 22-year-old man who allegedly shot Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in the head, killed six and wounded a dozen more last January in Tucson, Ariz., has been declared that he can't be tried. While Giffords is now recuperating as an outpatient in Texas, Loughner is in a Springfield, Mo., prison medical facility where federal prison officials have said they'll need to force him to take antipsychotic drugs.
The image of Justice blindfolded, holding her scales, is familiar from courthouses all over the United States and the world. Sadly, in its Thursday ruling in the case of PLIVA v Mensing, the U.S. Supreme Court made a decision that makes one wonder if that blindfold made the court unable to see the right thing to do.
When the wealthy and reclusive copper heiress Huguette M. Clark , she left $30 million to her personal nurse and $100,000 to her doctor, among other gifts bequested to charities and .
When Osama bin Laden’s death was announced there was no doubt how Americans felt about his passing. Joy erupted all across the country. People ran into the streets to celebrate. Cheers broke out at sporting events. The families of those murdered in the 9/11 attacks stated their relief.
The push to find more organs has gotten so desperate that we are now negotiating with mass murderers about the . While vicious creeps like Christian Longo connive to get national attention with talk of "repaying society" and finding "redemption" for their crimes, the facts are that obtaining organs from executed prisoners is impractical, poses huge health risks to potential recipients and is utterly unethical.
While Abbie Dorn was undergoing a C-section section to deliver her triplets four years ago at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, her uterus was accidentally nicked by a doctor, she began to bleed and her heart stopped.
Is it right to ask the few to sacrifice greatly to help the rest? When the reactors at the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear facilities began to melt down, the executives at Tokyo Electric Company had to make this request. More recently, Japanese government officials have had to face this dilemma again as they sought volunteers to maintain fire hoses, connect power cables and restore generators in the face of fires, explosions and radiation.
In the wake of the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan, rescue workers found 128 elderly people abandoned by medical staff at a hospital six miles from the damaged Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant. The tsunami also killed nearly half the 113 residents at a retirement home in Kesennuma. Eleven of those who lived died of exposure, and the other 53 are in a shelter with only kerosene heaters to keep them warm in near-freezing condition.
Are criminals’ brains fundamentally different from those of non-criminals? Can we really scan the head of a child and forecast whether he or she is more likely to wind up in prison than on the police force?
The unvaccinated woman from New Mexico who recently traveled through four U.S. airports while infected with the measles made me think of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes who said, “The right to swing my fist ends where the other man's nose begins.” He was paraphrasing the great British philosopher John Stuart Mill who argued in a classic 1860 essay that the sole justification for interfering with another person’s liberty was to prevent harm to others.
It is time for some frank talk with your doctor about dying.
On Nov. 4, 1971, Shep Glazer spoke before the House Ways and Means Committee, offering what was arguably the most powerful testimony presented to Congress in the past 40 years.
Watch out! The "death panels" are back. They are going to be used by Obama and his horde of federal health reformers to make sure that if you are old, very sick and go into a hospital, you will never return.
There has been a lot of good news lately in the battle against AIDS. The United Nations declared that the number of new HIV cases worldwide has dropped by a fifth over the past decade. A new pill has been shown to slash new infections without requiring patients to take many different pills many times a day. And the pope, shifting away from decades of harmful theology, said he could approve condom use in HIV-positive men as an act of responsible sexuality.
The astounding revelation that U.S. medical researchers more than 60 years ago is so horrifying that we want to believe that what happened then could never happen today. We want to believe that doctors are treating the poor, vulnerable and those outside the U.S. with more care and respect.
Biotech types call the first genetically engineered fish — a whopper of a salmon — a food breakthrough.
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