When I make the argument as I have repeatedly on this blog and in other contexts that as a whole the Republican Party and its leadership are anti-science, one of the counter arguments fired back at me is that Obama is himself anti-science. My initial reaction to this “Obama is anti-science” argument is somewhat visceral, …
What’s the Witherspoon Institute? Most of you know about the 2 scientists who for their own reasons want to kill embryonic stem cell (ESC) research and with it the hopes for millions of people. Relatively new on most of our radar screens, however, is an extremist right-wing “think tank” called The Witherspoon Institute, which I …
CIRM, the California stem cell agency, has funded hundreds of grants during its relatively short existence. You can do searches of these grants through a handy dandy web portal that CIRM has made available–it’s a very cool tool and I commend CIRM for making it available. I wish the tool had more options however including …
Word Cloud of Every CIRM-funded grant yields some surprising insights Read More »
Four GOP hopefuls–Gingrich, Bachmann, Santorum, and Perry–attended an anti-cure meeting tonight to reaffirm their pledges to give human rights to fertilized eggs. Remarkably, these 4 supposedly mainstream GOP candidates for President of the United States, have embraced the notion of giving the same rights to single celled fertilized eggs that living, breathing, thinking human beings …
Republicans pander at extreme Anti-Cure Rally tonight Read More »
Exactly two years ago today, I was lying in a hospital bed literally across the street from lab here at UC Davis. It seems unreal in a way, but painfully real it was and still is. On November 30, 2009, I had surgery for prostate cancer. Two years ago, things seemed pretty bleak. Now on …
My 2 years with cancer and what I learned from Steve Jobs Read More »
Remember those folks who were pushing an amendment in Mississippi that would have defined the one cell fertilized egg as a full blown person with all the same rights as a living, breathing, thinking Mississippian? Now the new battlefront for their movement is California. They want to get an initiative on the ballot to make …
Is a fertilized egg a Californian? Personhood movement brings battle to California Read More »
Chancellor Katehi gave a short, ~2 min. speech, at today’s UC Davis rally. Regrettably, I wasn’t there, but there is already video of it up on Youtube. You can watch it here. The gist of the speech is that she’s sorry and that she wants to connect more with students. The students in the crowd …
Video of Katehi’s speech today at UC Davis rally: “I’m sorry” Read More »
The grapevine is afire with the Geron news and there are many interpretations out there of what it means and why it happened. Based on several accounts from folks who remain anonymous, here is the most probable prediction of what happened to lead us to yesterday’s announcement. Geron has been worried for a long time …
The Scarlett letter? What the experts really think about Geron Read More »
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 …
Why Horton was wrong: a person is not a person no matter how small, even in Mississippi Read More »
When I talk to people about stem cell science and the timeline for turning data into treatments and cures, their reactions completely depend on whom they are. Scientists are patient, perhaps too patient….perhaps too understanding of the many years that we are told that science takes to get something to the clinic. Patients and patient …