One of the commenters on this blog told me, in response to my post on the opponents of stem cell research, to “get a life.” What’s a “life” according to this guy? To me? To you? We all lead different lives and have different ideas about what is a valuable life. We all face different […]
CIRM announced two sets of awards today that both should make major impact including its first clinical trial via Geron and $38 million for 27 basic biology studies. First Clinical Trial. Today CIRM awarded $25 million to support Geron’s FDA-approved clinical trial for spinal cord injury. This is CIRM’s first award to a for-profit company
CIRM funds $25 million for Geron trial, $38 million for basic biology Read More »
What is a survivor? Dan Zenka, Senior VP of the Prostate Cancer Foundation, recently pondered this question in an excellent post on his blog. The post has also drawn more than 50 comments, which I found very interesting based on the range of opinions and different perspectives. The comments are about prostate cancer, but could
What is a survivor? Read More »
When does politics trump hope? It seems all the time. I think politicians frequently take positions on science-related issues that they either don’t really believe or understand. Perhaps I’m wrong, but for example, I don’t believe that most national level Republican leaders oppose ES cell research. Most of us have either ourselves faced injuries or
Now and then we will revisit some of our most popular posts and/or posts with the most comments. One of the best: The Monster Tumor: What is a teratoma really? You can go to the link above to read the original post and comments but I’ve pasted the post itself below. In stem cell research
Greatest hits: What is a teratoma? Read More »
Imagine a tea party, where instead of tea, they were serving only Kool-Aid. Not only did you have to drink it, no questions asked, but you had to say it was tea. Despite the bright cherry red color, the unmistakable smell from the artificial flavoring, and maybe even the big Kool-Aid Pitcher symbol with the
Drinking the Kool-Aid at the Tea Party Read More »
The tragic 9.0 earthquake and tsunamis that hit Japan a few weeks ago are having lasting consequences not only for Japan, but also for the world via radiation. One area of particular concern is the radiation that has leaked and is continuing to leak from the damaged nuclear reactors. At this point, the radiation
A reality check on the radiation spreading across the globe Read More »
Before stem cell research was on everyone’s minds and before the phrase “regenerative medicine” was familiar to most scientists, The Roman Reed Spinal Cord Injury Research Act of 1999 funded research into treating paralysis. It was a revolutionary piece of legislation, named after my friend Roman Reed, a true hero. Roman was playing college football
Support Funding for the Roman Reed Spinal Cord Injury Research Program Read More »
UPDATE: Judy Woodruff just posted an interesting piece on the budget battle for NIH. You can read it here. We have had a welcome surprise of late: conservatives are telling Republicans (yes, you read that right) not to cut the NIH budget. The federal government has been running on a string of continuing resolutions (CRs)
Conservatives agree: proposed Republican budget cuts for NIH are mindless Read More »
In it’s first five years in existence, CIRM has awarded almost $1.2 billion for stem cell research in the state of California in the form of just over 400 grants. To give you some perspective on that amount of research funding, let’s compare this CIRM funding to NIH funding for stem cell research across the
The Amazing Path of CIRM in its first 5 years Read More »