September 19, 2007
The Executive Order calls on Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Michael Leavitt, who in turn is directing NIH, to conduct and support research that takes advantage of emerging potential alternative methods for generating stem cells that are pluripotent, i.e., … Read More
September 19, 2007
A week before New Jersey’s ballots are to be printed, a conservative group filed a lawsuit today seeking a restraining order over a statewide public question that seeks approval to borrow $450 million for stem-cell research. (Asbury Park Press)
September 19, 2007
What are a society’s obligations to children with respect to their parents, parenting and family structure, when society is complicit in their coming into being by funding, supporting or regulating the reproductive technologies that are used to conceive them or … Read More
September 18, 2007
Cardiologists at Düsseldorf University Hospital said they have been the first in the world to use stem cell therapy to save a patient who suffered from a severe heart attack. (Deutsche Welle)
September 18, 2007
What’s worse—being diagnosed with cancer or discovering that your health insurance won’t go the distance in covering your treatment? These days, with earlier detection and better therapies, cancer isn’t the death sentence it once often was. But treating it is … Read More
September 18, 2007
Ms. Iacoboni, 31 and a new mother herself, has a daunting task. The information and the choices she must explain form a slippery, spiraling staircase, with every step posing questions of risk, hope, heartbreak, conscience — made even more precipitous … Read More
September 18, 2007
For the first time, an osteoporosis drug has reduced deaths and prevented new fractures in elderly patients with broken hips, according to new research. Some experts called the drop in deaths ‘striking’ but said other drugs could have a similar … Read More
September 18, 2007
Biotech companies, private investors and government funders will shy away from sponsoring further research because Mohr died while a subject in an experiment using genetic engineering to treat disease. (MSNBC)
September 18, 2007
Annual health care spending per person totaled $6,409 in New England and $6,151 in the rest of the Northeast, compared to a national average of $5,283, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reports in Tuesday’s issue of the journal … Read More
September 18, 2007
Lawmakers and scientists agree clinical studies should be more transparent, but disagree on how that should be accomplished. (Los Angeles Times)
September 18, 2007
The advancing field of in vitro fertilization helps millions of couples who want children. It also raises moral and legal issues about the use and destruction of embryos. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
September 18, 2007
Physician-assisted suicide advocates in California who have been unable to pass legislation and are short on cash for a ballot initiative campaign now plan to put an “aid in dying” ministry into operation. (San Jose Mercury News)
September 18, 2007
Postmortem tests on an Illinois woman who died mysteriously in July after getting an experimental gene treatment show no evidence that she was killed directly by the genetically altered viruses she was given, a committee of experts was told yesterday. … Read More
September 17, 2007
Strict controls are needed to ensure genetic information collected for research is not used inappropriately by outside parties, experts have warned. Many DNA databases have been collated for specific studies on genes and disease, a British Society of Human Genetics … Read More
September 17, 2007
The “genetics generation” has much to be proud of, however. The mapping of the human genome in the late 1990s, the advent of high-output methods to comb through thousands of genes, and a deepening knowledge of the complexities of DNA … Read More
September 17, 2007
For months, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton has promised a plan to bring health care to every American. She was to make good on that pledge Monday, unveiling a sweeping proposal requiring everyone to carry health insurance and offering … Read More
September 17, 2007
Consciousness is the last bastion of research: the ghost in the machinery of the brain we cannot see, but only dimly detect. And why it exists at all remains largely a mystery. (COSMOS magazine)
September 17, 2007
A few hours before she died this summer at the age of 36, Jolee Mohr lay in a Chicago hospital so swollen by internal bleeding and her failing kidneys that her husband decided against bringing their 5-year-old daughter to say … Read More
September 17, 2007
Missouri’s Catholic bishops, right-to-life groups and other opponents of last year’s stem-cell research initiative are lining up behind the new proposal to prohibit the cloning of human cells. (Kansas City Star)
September 17, 2007
A prominent Australian scientist was named Friday to run California’s $3 billion stem cell research program, filling a leadership vacuum that had threatened to rob the program of recently gained momentum. (New York Times)
September 16, 2007
From The Associated Press Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton rejoins the health care debate in earnest Monday with a plan to expand coverage. Positions of other presidential candidates: DEMOCRATS: _Delaware Sen. Joe Biden: Expand health insurance to cover all … Read More
September 15, 2007
We all make mistakes and, if you believe medical scholar John Ioannidis, scientists make more than their fair share. By his calculations, most published research findings are wrong. Dr. Ioannidis is an epidemiologist who studies research methods at the University … Read More
September 14, 2007
The American Journal of Bioethics Issue 7(9) is now available by subscription only. Perspective “Rethinking Neuroethics in the Light of the Extended Mind Thesis” by Neil Levy, 3 – 11. Perspective “Propranolol and the Prevention of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Is … Read More
September 14, 2007
There are no cures for debilitating neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s, and researchers still don’t understand what causes brain cells to die in patients suffering from these diseases. But MIT researchers hope to speed up the quest for answers and … Read More
September 14, 2007
The Vatican, ruling on a debate that has divided Catholic hospitals, said on Friday it was wrong to stop administering food and water to patients in a vegetative state even if they would never regain consciousness. (Reuters)
