Tag Archives: medicine

At Cross-Purposes

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For one segment of society, the
live birth of a baby at 26 weeks is cause for celebration. For another, abortion
after 26 weeks is exercising the “right to choose”. When and how will
our society resolve this conflict?

World’s smallest baby ready to go home

CHICAGO (AP) — A baby who weighed less than a can of soda when she was born by Caesarean section three months ago is nearly ready to be released from the hospital. She is believed to be the smallest baby in the world ever to survive.

How to stop the attack on abortion rights

THE BUSH administration thinks it has political “capital.” And it plans on spending some to destroy women’s right to choose abortion.

Tucked away in the omnibus spending bill approved by Congress last month was a provision that would allow physicians, hospitals, HMOs and insurance plans to opt out of giving abortion referrals, as they currently are required to. This provision will especially affect poor women, who rely on federally funded health care.

Do I Get Cool Mutant Powers?

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The $100 billion a year mobile phone industry asserts that there is no conclusive evidence of harmful effects as a result of electromagnetic radiation.

The multi-billion dollar tobacco industry asserts that there is no conclusive evidence of harmful effects as a result of cigarette smoking. Since I’ve been a frequent cell phone user since 1998, I’ll be keeping my eye on this issue.

Study: Cell phones scramble DNA

Radio waves from mobile phones harm body cells and damage DNA in laboratory conditions, according to a new study majority-funded by the European Union, researchers said on Monday.

Hell With the Lid Off

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Pittsburgh used to be called “Hell with the lid off”. Since most of the
steel mills closed, the air quality has dramatically improved. It seem, though,
that it still has a long way to go. The
EPA has announced a list of the 50 cities with the worst air quality. Actually, it’s a list of counties that failed to attain the conditions set out in the PM 2.5 Standard. Allegheny County failed. Environmental Defense published a similar study in September that highlighted cities in which summer air conditions affected children the worst. Pittsburgh was 18th, with first being the worst. *Sigh* Oh well, at least I don’t leave around Philthadelphia any more. Then I’d really be sucking in scummy air. 😉

New Embryonic Stem Cell Sources

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The Washington Post reports that there are two new ways to isolate embryonic stem cells. The first involves recovering useable cells from hopelessly damaged embryos that were frozen in IVF clinics. The researchers at Columbia compare this to taking organs from brain-dead patients. Of course, if one considers IVF inherently wrong, this still doesn’t get you off the hook.

The second type is trickier: there is a method of cloning called somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), where the nucleus of a non-genital region of one’s body (usually a gut cell, but it can be anything other than an ovum or sperm cell) is transferred to an egg cell whose own nucleus was destroyed. The trick to getting stem cells in the second method is to somehow interfere with this procedure so that the new hybrid cell does not become an embryo, but can in fact still produce some totipotent embryonic stem cells.

I am skeptical of the second method. One, somatic cell transfer has a lot of problems. It took 227 tries to clone a sheep before Dolly was born, and she became a medical mess afterwards. Now we are supposed to take SCNT, interfere with it somehow so it doesn’t make an embryo, and think that maybe this’ll create something that we can cure things with? Secondly, the scientists claim that no embryo is made, but scientists and physicians have been retroactively redefining human life for about 30 years now in order to make abortion and destructive human research convenient. E.g., they invented the term "preembryo" so that they could make embryonic stem cell research legit because they weren’t really killing a true human being. I have yet to track down the literature on this second method, so I am still unsure of whether a complete organism (embryonic or otherwise) is in fact never created and killed by this method. Stay tuned.