October 20, 2007
The Not Dead Yet blog has a post up, byline Stephen Drake, castigating an opinion column published in the Hasting Center Report, byline bioethics consultant Anita J. Tarzian (no link available), that validates all of the worries the disability rights … Read More
October 20, 2007
Cold Spring Harbor, the very name should bring chills. It was the home of the notorious Eugenics Record Office, operated for decades in the early 20th Century by the world’s most influential eugenicist Charles Davenport–one of the great villains in … Read More
October 18, 2007
I’ve known this was coming for a long time–a lawsuit in Montana demanding a state constitutional right to assisted suicide. In fact, I predicted it back in 2000 when I wrote in the Weekly Standard: James H. Armstrong, M.D. v. … Read More
October 18, 2007
Since the KC Star’s Kit Wagar continues refusing to report the stem cell debate accurately or objectively, I thought a few further examples of true scientific definitions are in order–definitions propounded by SCNT supporters, but which Wagar appears to care … Read More
October 18, 2007
Adult stem cell research just keeps rolling along. Now, scientists have morphed fat stem cells into nerve cells. From the story: Accident victims could one day have their severed nerves “rewired” with the help of stem cells extracted by liposuction. … Read More
October 18, 2007
This is how the term “somatic cell nuclear transfer” is defined on the National Institutes of Health Web site: Somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT–A technique that combines an enucleated egg (nucleus removed) and the nucleus of a somatic cell to … Read More
October 17, 2007
Nobel Laureate James Watson is an out-and-out eugenicist who has urged that genetic engineering be used, for example, to rid the world of stupid people, and said that “some anti-Semitism is justified.” None of his eugenicist comments put him in … Read More
October 16, 2007
I guess parents aren’t for raising kids anymore, just housing them. A Maine school wants authority to issue contraceptives to 11 year-olds without parental notification. From the story: Students who have parental permission to be treated at King Middle School’s … Read More
October 15, 2007
This just in: Bone marrow stem cells may help in the field of hip replacements. Okay, As you were. Scientists have some cloning to do.
October 15, 2007
I think Bobby Schindler is right. There have been a lot of stories of late about how supposedly vegetative patients could understand, or of “miraculous” awakenings by people who doctors were sure would never react consciously again. Bobby, Terri Schiavo’s … Read More
October 14, 2007
As readers of SHS know, I am pretty disgusted with the KC Star and its political reporter Kit Wagar, based on my belief that the paper in general, and Wagar in specific, are biased in their reporting of the great … Read More
October 14, 2007
The NIH will soon be funding research into obtaining pluripotent stem cells from non embryonic sources. Wherever one stands on the Bush funding policy or human cloning research, this should be cause for celebration. After all, don’t the scientists always … Read More
October 13, 2007
I have this theory; well not even a theory, perhaps better stated, a mere notion. I believe that human cloning is profoundly and intrinsically wrong in that it reduces human life to a mere malleable and exploitable commodity. It is … Read More
October 12, 2007
Well, my little blog entry of yesterday taking the MO Secretary of State to task for bias for the Orwellian language she is using to describe the proposed ballot initiative to enact a real cloning ban in Missouri made a … Read More
October 12, 2007
Readers of SHS and those who keep up with disability rights issues will remember “Ashley’s case,” which I covered extensively (for example here, here. and in NRO here). The controversy concerned a little disabled girl given a non therapeutic hysterectomy, … Read More
October 11, 2007
This story gets the eye roll of the year award: The University of Maastricht in the Netherlands is awarding a doctorate to a researcher who wrote a paper on marriages between humans and robots. David Levy, a British artificial intelligence … Read More
October 11, 2007
The proprietor of a Japanese how-to-commit-suicide WEB site has been arrested for murder, apparently for killing a woman who asked to be murdered. From the story: Saito, a 33-year-old electrician in Ichihara, Chiba Prefecture, opened the bulletin board site in … Read More
October 11, 2007
The MO Secretary of State has released ballot language to describe a potential initiative to outlaw human somatic cell nuclear transfer cloning. And of course, it is utterly biased, scientifically inaccurate, and disrespectful of the democratic process. The ballot initiative … Read More
October 10, 2007
I have always maintained that the more progress that adult stem cell researchers make, the harder it will be for mainstream media outlets to maintain their news blockade that has prevented important success stories from reaching the public consciousness. This … Read More
October 10, 2007
This story is disturbing on several levels. Apparently in Massachusetts, pediatricians are grilling their child patients with questions to invade family privacy. From a column in the Boston Herald, byline Michael Graham: I found this out after my 13-year-old daughter’s … Read More
October 9, 2007
Oh, the whining. Massachusetts has funded and permitted human SCNT, but it forbids the buying and selling of human eggs for biological research. This has apparently brought research into human cloning to a halt because women aren’t particularly interested in … Read More
October 8, 2007
I was interviewed for almost an hour for this story, which I think is pretty straight and down the middle, published today in the Daily Journal, California’s leading legal newspaper (no link available). The story concerns the suicide “counseling” in … Read More
October 8, 2007
One of the primary purposes behind ESCR and human cloning research, in my view, is to eventually genetically engineer human progeny. Such research is now in its very early stages. But I think this Nobel Prize is an indicator of … Read More
October 8, 2007
One of the tactics of the euthanasia/assisted suicide movement is to get medical organizations to “go neutral” on assisted suicide. Which is a ridiculous notion when you think of it. I mean, how can a responsible professional association not have … Read More
October 7, 2007
Proposition 71 established a closed doors grant approval process, in which the CIRM doles out hundreds of millions of borrowed taxpayers dollars to private industry and public entities to conduct human cloning and embryonic stem cell (and related) research. All … Read More
