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Feb 19, 2009 | 1
In May 2001, Israeli parents of a nine-year old boy with a crippling disease that left him wheelchair-bound took their child to see doctors in Moscow. In a highly experimental procedure that was presumably unavailable in their home country, those doctors injected fetal stem cells into various regions of his brain.
The boy’s parents—they aren’t named in a report describing the case in this week’s PLoS Medicine—must have been desperate. The nine-year old suffered from ataxia-telangiectasia, a childhood disease that causes degeneration of parts of the brain that control muscle movements and speech. The symptoms include slurred speech, poor balance, impaired immune function, and the appearance of red spider veins called telangiectasias in the eyes, ears or cheeks.
Jan 28, 2009 | 4
Now that some of the gates blocking embryonic stem cell research in the U.S. may be opening thanks to the Obama administration, the ethical guidelines for such research may be getting a closer look. A key question: Should research on embryonic stem cells be subject to the same stringent rules that govern studies on human beings?
That was one of the questions that came up last night at a meeting of the New York Stem Cell Foundation. Harold Varmus—an Obama supporter who now co-chairs the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology—told a crowd gathered at the Harvard Club in Midtown Manhattan that there is "reason to believe that there will be some executive order in the near future to reverse the Bush doctrine,” aka the ban on federal funding for research on embryonic stem-cell lines produced after August 9, 2001.
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mdichristina Meet the 17-year cicada brood (video) http://t.co/Vl8U3InUHg
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The Geoffrey Beene Foundation Alzheimer’s Initiative (GBFAI) is launching the 2013 Geoffrey Beene Global NeuroDiscovery Challenge whose
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