Fire Breathing
Originally uploaded by Jdblundell.
There’s something funny about pictures of people squinting from bright flashes and exhauling large amounts of smoke from a Hookah. Dollye, Walker, Matt and I all enjoyed some tasty Turkish food and Hookahs last night in Richardson. A good time had by all I do believe.
From CMS:
Watch Seth Godin riff on what’s broken (watching a Seth Godin riff is as good as reading one!). It all comes from the site This is Broken, which has loads more great examples. Seth offers up a few reasons why things may be broken:
Not my job – It wasn’t someone’s job to fix it, so they didn’t. I didn’t know – Someone didn’t know it was even broken, which is probably the scariest (do you use your own stuff?). I’m not a fish – The person who designed it never uses it. Broken on purpose – This is kind of the odd category for something that’s supposed to be broken.
So what’s broken in church?
I still think that’s a funny looking headline, but I bet it grabbed your attention – at least the first time you read it.
Just got this news update about Medical City in Dallas:
A Dallas-area hospital has become the Texas Cord Blood Bank’s first donor collection site in North Texas — the fourth donor site in Texas.
Medical City has begun collecting stem cells from umbilical cord blood. Umbilical cord blood, which is normally discarded after a baby is born, is naturally rich in blood-producing cells.
I do find it funny though that I read it in a San Antonio business journal and not a local paper.
KERA’s Talk Show looked at the 50,000 plus frozen embryos left over from in vetro fertilization. A great program and interesting issues/points.
Check out the podcast.
From the show’s description:
500,000 frozen embryos left over from in vitro fertilization procedures are accumulating in storage in the nation’s 430 fertility clinics. What should couples do with these embryos? It’s a difficult decision for many people and rapidly expanding access to fertilization treatment means that more and more couples will face the question in the future. Liza Mundy, Washington Post staff writer, worries that the excess of frozen embryos might “explode the reproductive landscape” in America. Mundy writes about the personal, political, and moral dimensions of the subject in “Souls on Ice: America’s human embryo glut and the unbearable lightness of almost being,” which appears in the current issue of Mother Jones Magazine. Krys Boyd will talk with Liza Mundy this hour.
Doing even more research on the topic, this was just released a couple hours ago from CNN Money:
Embryonic stem cells might hold the secrets to curing paralysis and brain damage, but they’ve also garnered plenty of controversy with the anti-abortion lobby because they’re harvested from embryos.
However, work using adult stem cells – which are donated by grown men and women – is not only free of such controversy, it’s actually much closer to getting effective products on the market.
The adult stem cell research at several biotech outfits in particular – Osiris, Cytori, Aastrom – is worth keeping an eye on according to analysts.
“From a Wall Street perspective, adult stem cells are a much better investment,” said Stephen Dunn of Dawson James Securities. “These are the guys who are going to be in the news in 2007 and 2008.”
According to the report, while embryonic stem cell researchers are experimenting with rats, adult stem cell researchers have moved on to more advanced tests with humans. The embryonic-based stem cell treatments are probably a decade away, but the US market could see its first adult-based stem cell treatments within the next couple of years.
That’s exciting and something I would be willing to throw tax payer money behind.
I don’t know how or why I missed this, but I found a very interesting report from the Washington Post from April of this year.
Researchers said yesterday that they have grown complete urinary bladders in a laboratory and transplanted them into patients, improving their health and achieving a Holy Grail of medicine: the first cultivation of working replacements for failing solid organs in people.
The “neo-bladders,” each one grown in a small laboratory container from a pinch of a patient’s own cells, have been working in seven young patients for an average of almost four years, according to a report released yesterday by the British journal the Lancet. The organs have remained free of the many complications that bedevil the conventional practice of surgically constructing bladders from other tissues.
According to the article, no embryonic stem cells were used in growing the new bladders. That’s great information for possible future health issues.
My decision is still out on embryonic stem cell research. I don’t know enough about the issue to decide. On one hand, I believe we should be looking to cure every and all conditions and diseases we can and I have a hard time believing that it’s OK to flush embryos from fertility clinics down the drain, rather than use them for research. It seems a bit hypocritical to me.
I have a hard time believing its OK to kill anyone, embryo, fetus, newborn or a 115 year old senior living in a nursing home.
On the other hand, I have no issue with adult stem cell research, or umbilical cord stem cells, or even fetus stem cells if the cells can be taken without harming life.
But depending on which report you read, the research seems to go both ways on how much advantage embryonic stem cells might have over other stem cells.
I would love to see the conservatives (or anyone else) stand up and say “While we realize there may be ethical issues involved with embryonic stem cells, we’ll fund research of umbilical cord stem cells, adult stem cells and others.”
Quit arguing over embryonic stem cells and lets find a common ground with other cells that we know will not harm a life.
In contrast to research on embryonic stem cells, non-embryonic stem cell research has already resulted in numerous instances of actual clinical benefit to patients. For example, patients suffering from a whole host of afflictions — including (but not limited to) Parkinson’s disease, autoimmune diseases, stroke, anemia, cancer, immunodeficiency, corneal damage, blood and liver diseases, heart attack, and diabetes — have experienced improved function following administration of therapies derived from adult or umbilical cord blood stem cells. The long-held belief that non-embryonic stem cells are less able to differentiate into multiple cell types or be sustained in the laboratory over an extended period of time –rendering them less medically-promising than embryonic stem cells — has been repeatedly challenged by experimental results that have suggested otherwise.
If this is true, why are we not funding more research on adult stem cells? Chris Bell said in a phone interview last week that he would propose spending $30 million on stem cell research if elected. He didn’t clarify if that was for embryonic or all stem cell research – but given the context of the interview, I would guess it would go towards embryonic.
If I were Gov. “McDreamy” I’d propose spending $30 million on adult and umbilical cord stem cell research in Texas right away. Show the supporters of embryonic stem cell research that there are other options. Prove it to us.
For more articles and information on other stem cell options, visit The Coalition of Americans for Research Ethics