Does the Vatican view the American pro-lifers as a bunch of wacky extremists? An article today certainly suggest this. What’s going on? The Vatican, Catholics more generally, and “pro-lifers”, as designated by the Catholic website CatholicCulture.org are still apparently very much at odds over a now cancelled Vatican conference on stem cells that would have included …
The Vatican pulled the plug on its 2012 stem cell meeting this week because some of the very speakers it had itself invited were deemed too controversial. Why? Because these speakers work on or support embryonic stem cell research and for lack of a better way to put it, the Vatican was afraid these scientists …
Vatican in damage control mode on conference scandal Read More »
Does the Planned Parenthood icon at left send chills down your spine, because according to the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and most Republican Leaders, it should scare you greatly. An opinion piece today in the WSJ provides an extreme perspective on the debacle in which the Komen Foundation last week dropped support for Planned Parenthood, …
Refuting the WSJ’s propaganda piece on Planned Parenthood Read More »
I recently did a post telling you about one of my favorite molecules, Myc, which is important not only in cancer but also in most, if not all stem cells including iPS cells. There’s a lot more to Myc and how it does it’s tricks in embryonic stem cells and iPS cells. It cannot do …
Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) announced today that it has treated two patients in its clinical trials: one for Stargardt’s Macular Dystrophy (see official trial page for a lot more info) and one for Dry Age-Related Macular Degeneration (see official trial page here for a lot more info). The patients underwent the treatment at UCLA and each …
Behind the stem cell “war” that has been going on for years is a deceptively simple question: when does the life of a human being begin? As someone who works with human embryonic stem cells and iPS cells, I’ve given this a lot of thought. But first, before I post on that, I want to …
When Does Human Life Begin? Please take part in our poll Read More »
I’m trying to remember the first time I ever heard about clones. It had to be as a kid. Maybe in a monster movie or TV show? Possibly a clone was referred to by the more general term “double”, which is not necessarily a clone. Whatever it was, I’m sure as a kid that I …
Weekly reads: game of clones, super-SOX, Moonwalk Bio, Great Wall’s living skin Read More »
CRISPR gene editing has made rapid progress heading from bench to bedside. Perhaps the fastest has been its progress toward clinical use to combat sickle cell disease. We’ll start with a new paper on one major effort here. CRISPR gene editing. This process often involves cutting DNA, which then can be used as an opening to …
Weekly reads: CRISPR sickle cell, Parkinson’s, pig-human chimera concerns Read More »
The biotech Sarepta has had a complicated go of it with the FDA sometimes related to their Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) gene therapy efforts. In late 2016 I wrote about how there was some controversy as the FDA approved the Sarepta drug eteplirsen (Exondys 51) also for DMD, going against an advisory panel that had …
Weekly reads: Sarepta, epigenomics, FDA on eyedrops Read More »
As we think about how much of a role belief should play in the hard sciences such as cell biology, a supposed cell type called VSEL or very-small embryonic stem cell-like cells comes to mind. For these guys it seems to me that the ratio of data to belief isn’t great. VSELs have nine lives. I …
The role of belief in hard science: the VSEL case Read More »