| News Archives: |
- Asia, Europe moving to stake claims in promising stem cell research industry
While President Bush remains steadfastly against human embryonic stem cell research, limiting federal funding on moral grounds, nations around the globe are pouring millions of dollars into the field.
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- Mother to have 'designer twins' after screening for fatal gene
A physiotherapist is to have 'designer twins' after becoming one of the first British women to undergo a revolutionary new type of genetic screening.
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- Senate to take up stem cell bill in July
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Senate on Thursday reached a breakthrough agreement to vote on legislation that would allow federal funding of embryonic stem cell research.
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- No fertility goddesses
Carrie L. Lukas, vice president for policy and economics at the Independent Women's Forum, is a master at shuffling work and family. A stay-at-home mother of a 6-month-old girl, Molly, she also is the author of the new book "The Politically Incorrect Guide to Women, Sex, and Feminism," which examines the hard data behind women and society.
The following are excerpts from an interview with Mrs. Lukas.
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- German, French and Swiss Bishops against Assisted Suicide
In a combined pastoral letter, three bishops from Germany, France and Switzerland have spoken out against assisted suicide, saying it was unjust to the dying.
Archbishops Robert Zollitsch from Freiberg and Joseph Doré from Strasbourg, together with the Basel bishop Kurt Koch, said that all humans were obliged to respect the principle of the sanctity of human life and the rights of the chronically ill and dying.
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- Getting machines to think like us
In 1956, a group of computer scientists gathered at Dartmouth College to delve into a brand-new topic: artificial intelligence.
The summer rendezvous in the Connecticut River Valley town of Hanover, N.H., served as a springboard for discussions on ways that machines could simulate aspects of human cognition: How can computers use language? Can machines improve themselves? Is randomness a factor in the difference between creative thinking and unimaginative competent thinking?
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- Docs: Comatose Man's Brain Rewired Itself
-- Doctors have their first proof that a man who was barely conscious for nearly 20 years regained speech and movement because his brain spontaneously rewired itself by growing tiny new nerve connections to replace the ones sheared apart in a car crash.
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- The Perils of Cloning
It was 10 years ago this week, on a warm July night, that a newborn lamb with an unique pedigree took her first breath in a small shed tucked in the Scottish hills a few miles south of Edinburgh. From the outside, she looked no different from thousands of other sheep born each summer on surrounding farms. But Dolly, as the world soon came to realize, was no ordinary lamb. She was cloned from a single mammary cell of an adult ewe, overturning long-held scientific dogma that had declared such a thing biologically impossible. Her birth set off a race in laboratories around the world to duplicate the breakthrough. It also raised the specter--however distant--of human cloning.
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- Harvard's stem cell misstep
harvard
Earlier this month, world-renowned Harvard University announced that it would become the first non-commercial institution in the US to attempt human embryo cloning. All funding is to come from private donations because of restrictions imposed by US President George W. Bush. The decision was made after two years of discussion amongst eight institutional review boards at five institutions. Like many other observers, the New York Times praised the decision as "bold moves made after intense soul-searching". However, not all stem cell researchers approved of the decision. James L. Sherley, of near-by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Harvard graduate, explains why in this exclusive MercatorNet interview.
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- Senate to Consider Stem Cell Proposals
Senate leaders from both parties agreed yesterday to schedule a vote on a package of bills that would loosen President Bush's five-year-old restrictions on human embryonic stem cell research
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- A Clone by any Other Name
MISSOURIANS WILL VOTE THIS NOVEMBER on an amendment to their state constitution that claims to ban human cloning. In a red state known for its pro-life movement, that would seem to be good news for those who believe that human embryos should not be created and destroyed for scientific research.
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- Seoul: “cloning pioneer” plans to resume stem cell research
Seoul (AsiaNews/Agencies) – Dr Hwang Woo-suk, South Korean “cloning pioneer” has announced plans to open a new laboratory next month to resume research. This was revealed today by his lawyer, Lee Geon-haeng.
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- Irish Woman Sues Over Frozen Embryos
(Washington Post) DUBLIN,
Ireland -- A landmark lawsuit seeking to confirm a frozen embryo's
right to life opened in an Irish court Monday, a touchstone issue in a
predominantly Roman Catholic country whose constitution outlaws
abortion and commits the state to defend the unborn. The case
before High Court Justice Brian McGovern pits a 38-year-old woman
against her estranged husband, who is refusing to allow her to use the
couple's frozen embryos, produced at a Dublin in-vitro fertilization
clinic four years ago. The couple have not been identified because of
Irish privacy laws.
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June 26, 2006- New genetic screening test developed
LONDON, England (UPI) -- A revolutionary test developed by British scientists will allow human embryos to be screened for thousands of genetic mutations before implantation.
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- Lack of Human Eggs Could Hamper US Cloning Efforts
Last week marked the end of a two-year waiting period for several scientists at Harvard University who are planning to start human cloning experiments, a crucial first step in generating stem cell lines matched to specific patients. While the announcement came amid much fanfare, the researchers will now start a new waiting game. They need fresh human eggs to begin their experiments -- and they have no idea how many women will step forward to undergo the lengthy and potentially risky donation procedure.
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- Should science be building better babies?
Can it ever be ethical to give an unborn baby a "better" set of genes?
Professor Ian Wilmut, creator of Dolly the sheep, is one of those who thinks so. Last week, he provoked public controversy by proposing a new type of gene therapy to eliminate cruel genetic diseases such as Huntington's and cystic fibrosis.
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- The Many Casualties of Cloning
The details of the cloning scandal in South Korea are by now familiar. Dr. Hwang Woo Suk and his colleagues, the only researchers in the world to convince the scientific community that they had cloned human embryos and derived embryonic stem cells (ESCs) from them, are now seen as having perpetrated a massive deception. Investigative reports by Seoul National University and others say that, contrary to past disclaimers, the team solicited over a hundred women (often with cash incentives) and even pressured female researchers to provide human eggs for cloning experiments, at serious risk to the women’s health; that from over two thousand eggs the researchers failed to produce even one stem cell line despite hundreds of cloning attempts; and that they covered up their failure by falsifying two major articles in a prestigious U.S. science journal.
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- Fight against genetic discrimination moves to national airwaves
She was diagnosed in 2002 with a rare genetic condition called alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, a lack of a liver protein that blocks the destructive effects of certain enzymes. The condition may lead to emphysema and liver disease.
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