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 »
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
Secrets of the Witherspoon Gang Read More »
About two months about Geron shocked and disappointed the stem cell community by dropping its stem cell program. The move was reportedly made for financial, not scientific reasons. Biotech companies have to be financially sound in order to help stem cell researchers turn science into cures and Geron’s leadership had to do what it thought
What does Geron’s departure mean for ACT? Some perspectives Read More »
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 »
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
More on Myc: meet the “Miz’s” in our new paper 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 »
Monday I did a post in response to an item that appeared in the Secondhand Smoke Blog by Wesley J. Smith where he invoked the opponents of ESC research favorite term to contrast so-called adult stem cell research with ESC research. In addition, he implied that George W. Bush deserved some of the credit for
Lessons from getting attacked by ESC research opponents Read More »
The Susan G. Komen Foundation is an awesome organization. It has raised nearly $2 billion dollars in less than 2 decades for breast cancer research. It also has a variety of educational programs. This is an organization that has likely saved hundreds of women’s lives and I think will save thousands of lives through its
Trying to understand the Catholic ban on the Komen Charity Read More »
What’s up with Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) and Geron? 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 latest scoop on ACT and Geron Read More »
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 »