Year: 2011

What are the goals of the Vatican stem cell meeting and why no press releases so far?

Today the Vatican held the first day of its adult stem cell conference. Embryonic stem cells remained not surprisingly uninvited. This conference is an unprecedented event in the thousands of years of history of The Church so not surprisingly many people are very interested in the event and trying to understand what it means. Interestingly, …

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Key points about adult versus embryonic stem cells

Knoepfler lab stem cells

What with the Mississippi “personhood” amendment up for a vote today and also the Vatican Adult Stem Cell Conference beginning tomorrow, I thought today was a good time for a post about adult versus embryonic stem cells. Does stem cell research have to be either/or? Adult or stem? Can’t someone be for both adult and …

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Why Horton was wrong: a person is not a person no matter how small, even in Mississippi

Horton-Hears-a-Who-in-Mississippi

Tomorrow night voters in Mississippi will vote on the so-called “Personhood Amendment”. If passed, the amendment would make a fertilized egg by definition a human being with the same rights as a living, breathing, thinking, walking person in the state of Mississippi. The consequences are not clear, but possibilities include such things as complete bans on …

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Want to understand stem cells? Then you have to know Myc!

Often when we dig a little into the science of stem cells, people get turned off by all the strange names of molecules and jargon. However, whether you are a scientist, patient, investor, reporter, etc. there are some aspects of stem cell science that are ‘musts’ to know about. For example, you need to know …

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Stem Cell Ethics: from cells to the Vatican

What does “ethical” stem cell research mean? What is “unethical” stem cell research? Who decides the answers to these questions? A church? Governments? Individual people? The reality is that we all have our own opinions about what is ethical or unethical not only when it comes to stem cells, but for pretty much everything. For …

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Six fun, amazing, sometimes secret things to do in Seattle

salmon-slide-carkeek-park

Every now and then I do a post on something fun and non-science related, and today it’s all about Seattle. Since it’s Friday, don’t you wish you were on vacation in Seattle? If you can ever imagine visiting Seattle in the near future, bookmark this page because I give suggestions for great things (some that …

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You know about spam, but what does ham have to do with blogging?

I love readers’ comments on my blog. I wish there were a lot more comments so I hope that that builds over time. One challenge to having a dialogue via comments on a blog is that there is so much spam. How much spam you might ask? You may be surprised to learn that my …

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Comment from Roger Highfield, editor of The New Scientist

In response to our post on the recent New Scientist article, which we felt had an anti-ES cell bent, Highfield has responded. He wrote: New Scientist has always backed well-conducted research on ES cells and I have voiced my own support many times, notably in After Dolly (written with Ian Wilmut).  And I am not …

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