May 2008

Save the Liver!

Today’s LA Times is covering a story on four Japanese gang figures who received liver transplants at UCLA. The story raises all of the ethical issues surrounding organ donation and transplantation. How do we ethically share organs which are scarce and precious and needed for saving lives? Access to organs has always raised ethical problems. [...]

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Memorial or Mausoleum

Are the buildings in our lives meaningful? Or are they merely physical–neutral spaces devoid of value in themselves? I don’t think it’s too controversial that a building could mean something: maybe where you got married, maybe where your children were born, maybe where you worked your first job. My concern here is the great potential [...]

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Seeking Person Status for Chimpanzee

Matthew Hiasl Pan is the name given to him. Nice name except for one major detail. Pan is a 26 year old Chimpanzee. And in the radical animal rights activists mind Pan should be seen as, treated as and protected in law as a person. Thankfully the high court in Austria decided that only people [...]

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Will Wonders Never Cease?

A friend sent me the link to this news story the other day. In this Culture of Death, I never ceased to be amazed with the miraculous. This story highlights, yet another person, not quite dead yet, who suddenly and amazingly woke up. Her family said their good byes, and had pulled all of her [...]

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The Big Easy Shows Us How It’s Done

Louisiana just passed through their Senate committee, HR 370, which if passed, would ban the use of public funds for human cloning research. Hooray! Great model legislation moves forward without opposition and is headed to the Senate floor for a vote. Since its not being resisted, I hope that it passes. It has been unfortunate [...]

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Crazy Brave New Britain

Monday, as was expected, the United Kingdom approved the creation of human-animal hybrids for research. British officials have bought it hook line and sinker . . . they want to maintain their reputation as leaders in stem cell research. And since a strong contingent of organized groups have been successful at slowing down the human [...]

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DNA Fingerprinting Identifies Viable IVF Embryos

Has the era of high tech embryo profiling arrived? I have been following the recent study published in the journal Human Reproduction. Researchers have combined the technology that allows them to screen embryos at the blastocyst stage with the DNA fingerprinting and microarray analysis technology in order to identify the viable blastocysts transferred into the [...]

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3-years in Jail for Cross Species Cloning

South Korea has just tightened their laws and regulation around cloning research. “Cross-species cloning, in which DNA from human somatic cells is inserted into animal eggs, will now be punishable by up to three years in prison, the health ministry said.” The South Korean scandal caused by Hwang Woo-Suk in 2006 has created a climate [...]

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IVF: DNA Fingerprinting Used to Identify Viable Embryos

It just doesn’t seem to end. More quality controls on IVF embryos. Read this: For the first time, fertility researchers have used DNA fingerprinting to identify which embryos have implanted after in vitro fertilization or IVF and developed successfully to result in the births of healthy babies. The technique, combined with sampling cells from the [...]

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FDA Delays Clinical Trails of Embryonic Stem Cells

Hah! The FDA, in its great and infinite wisdom said “now wait a minute” to Geron Corporation. Here’s the scoop in its entirety. The Geron Corporation announced Wednesday that its plans to begin the first clinical trial using embryonic stem cells had been delayed by federal regulators. The company, based in Menlo Park, Calif., had [...]

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