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Strollerderby
Did you save those teeth?
You know how when you’re pregnant you get all those pamphlets about banking cord blood? Deciding whether or not to bank cord blood felt so heavy. If we didn’t, which we didn’t, were we being cheap? Foolish? Cynical? Overly Optimistic? Whatever we were the decision’s been made and I haven’t thought about it for years.
Then the other day I got an email announcing parents who didn’t bank cord blood have “second chance” by banking baby teeth which have stem cells in their pulp.
Which is great because I don’t have the four teeth (a fifth was swallowed) my kids have already lost. What are you supposed to do with baby teeth anyway if you don’t bank them for stem cells? Should you bank them?
Stem cell science took a shocking detour this week when a federal judge put a block on funding for the use of embryonic cells.
Scientists were stunned, and in the couple of days since the ruling, everyone is trying to figure out exactly what this means for the newly-invigorated field. In 2009, Obama issued an executive order giving a thumbs up to research using embryonic stem cells, as long as the embryos were from fertility clinics and would be discarded anyway, the donating woman was not paid, and she had fully consented.
Grants were given, university labs ramped up, and momentum was gaining.
But the field has been given a serious blow. For now, all the research proposals under consideration for funding by the National Institutes of Health are frozen, and no one is exactly clear on what this means for work that was allowed under the Bush policy.
What was the judge’s rationale? And what will Obama’s next move be? Continue reading »
The world’s first clinical trial using embryonic stem cells in humans is set to start, after a hold on the research was lifted by the FDA.
The stem cells, developed by the biopharmaceutical company Geron, will be injected into patients with spinal cord injuries, with the hope that they could eventually be used to repair damaged nerves and restore sensation.
It’s an exciting time for stem cell researchers — since Obama signed an executive order in early 2009, federal funding for the field has opened up. Bush seriously limited money for stem cell work when he restricted funding to lines from embryos created before 2001. How is Obama’s stance different? Continue reading »
The teenage son of two truck drivers who spends two-week stints at home by himself is about to show the world he can truly hang with the big boys. He’s thrown his hat in the ring for governor of Wisconsin.
Jared Christiansen is only seventeen, not yet even able to VOTE, but he’s hoping to take the seat soon to be vacated by retiring Gov. Doyle. Continue reading »
Imagine your kids walked into school tomorrow and watched a video on not using plastic bags at the grocery store or plastic bottles for their water. Would you A. Agree or B. Throw a hissy and call the media because the school was trying to brainwash your kids with “radical, leftist” propaganda?
If you guessed B., you apparently would fit right in with the folks at a Utah elementary school who are up in arms over their kids being shown the “I Pledge” video, in which celebs pledge to clean up the environment, find cures for Alzheimer’s and autism and other absurd notions. Continue reading »
Whether or not to bank your baby’s cord blood is the latest decision put to expectant parents as pregnancy and birth become increasingly technically complicated. On the one hand, many sick children have been successfully treated through stem cell transplants from siblings’ cord blood. On the other, cord blood collection and banking can be an expensive prospect.
Now there looks to be a new choice on the horizon. Continue reading »
Here’s something that throws that whole “I want to donate my body to science” saying out the window. New York State has said OK to paying women for their eggs . . . at least when they’ll be used for research.
It’s got bioethicists in a tizzy, and I’m still weighing out how I feel about it myself. On the one hand, women are paid for their eggs when it’s an “egg donation” so another person (be it a gay man or another woman) can make a baby. And it takes “work,” to donate eggs . . . regardless of who is getting them in the end, women have to take fertility drugs for a period of time plus daily hormone injections and actually go through the harvesting procedure (including going under anesthesia, which not everyone is comfortable with).
Just check out what it takes to do the Lupron injection: Continue reading »
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