In closing arguments in a federal lawsuit against the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), plaintiff lawyers accusing the agency of failing to effectively take care of our nation’s military veterans said, “1,457 veterans died while their appeals were pending” in the last six months alone. (CBS News)

Though Senator John McCain has promised to not raise taxes, his campaign acknowledged Wednesday that the health plan he outlined this week would have the effect of increasing tax payments for some workers, primarily those with high incomes and expensive health plans. (New York Times)

A bipartisan plan for universal health care coverage would pay for itself and eventually could create modest budget surpluses, according to a congressional report released Thursday. (AP)

When Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University reported his transformation of cultured mouse skin cells into a state approximating that of embryonic stem cells1, he was met with plenty of scepticism. Other scientists hadn’t anticipated that such a feat was possible. “Nobody else was even close to doing the same experiment,” says Richard Young of the Whitehead Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “That was a very special breakthrough.” (Nature)

My piece just out now on the egg sharing scheme proposed for the shortage of eggs in California.

In an effort to get more eggs into the hands of cloning researchers, the president of the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), Alan Trounson, recently suggested the solution to the human egg shortage is to implement an “egg-sharing” program. Rule number one, always BEWARE of euphemisms!

At the February 28, 2008, the CIRM Standards Working Group, Trounson is quoted as saying , “The demand for oocytes may be way beyond what we can possibly deliver,” and

“Women are not prepared to go through those procedures without some form of compensation.” Of course, Trounson’s complaint is in direct response to the number of grant applications CIRM is receiving for cloning research requiring human eggs. You see, this was never really about all those surplus embryos . read full article here.