Free Republic

Biotech company executives in the Bay Area met Tuesday to begin working with California's sputtering stem-cell research institute, which was jump-started last week by the $150 million boost it got from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. ``I feel we are at a very important point in history here,'' said Michael West, chairman and chief scientific officer of Advanced Cell Technology of Alameda. He added that it was essential ``do do everything we possibly can to see that money is well spent.'' Still, the executives who met in San Francisco with officials at the stem-cell institute, created in 2004 when California voters passed...

The machinery of the human body is wonderfully complex, especially in its moving parts. That's why recreating it in metal and plastic is commonly thought to be the stuff of science fiction, androids and bionic men. But professor Hugh Herr, director of the Biomechatronics Group at MIT's Media Lab, has made a career of taking the fiction out of the science. His team has developed, among other marvels, a prosthetic ``Rheo Knee" that uses artificial intelligence to replicate the workings of a biological human joint ... ... ``The amputee can think, contract muscles, and directly control the artificial leg. It's...

I respectfully disagree that misguided economic policies emanating from Sacramento are scaring away biotechnology companies from California, as expressed in a recent editorial ("Scary prospect: 'Disincentives' driving new businesses from state," Forum, The Reporter, May 14). Contrary to the editorial, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger doesn't believe that California's talented work force, great climate, high quality of life and entrepreneurial culture alone are sufficient to retain and grow our biotech industry. According to biotech companies themselves, to that list The Reporter should add: support for high quality research and education; reasonable taxation policies; support for enlightened federal immigration policies; and a fiscally-sound...

Do people have a fundamental right to genetically and biotechnologically enhance their bodies and brains? That question was central to the "Human Enhancement Technologies and Human Rights" (HETHR) Conference held over the Memorial Day weekend at Stanford University's Law School. The conference was sponsored by the Stanford Center for Law and the Biosciences along with a number of technoprogressive groups including the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, the Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics, geneforum, and ExtraLife. Far from there being a "right" to enhance oneself and one's progeny, some institutions and activists currently aim to outlaw various biotech...

May 17, 2006 - Scientists from the U. of Cincinnati claim to have developed a method to make organic light-emitting diodes (OLED) as much as 10x more efficient and 30x brighter -- with a little help from the humble salmon fish. Incorporating a thin layer of salmon DNA into the OLED structure as an electron-blocking layer improves the chance for electrons and holes to recombine and emit photons, thus enhancing the device's luminance, the researchers claim. Tests showed that a green "BioLED" with the DNA electron blocking layer (current density of 200 mA/cm2) achieved luminance of 15000 cd/m2, vs. 4500...

On May 12, Hwang Woo-suk, the “disgraced cloning scientist,” was indicted on charges of fraud, embezzlement, and ethics violations. The scientific community has rightly distanced itself from Hwang over his falsification of data. But there is still one thing that his efforts and much of the biotech industry share in common: a utilitarian disregard for the dignity and sanctity of human life. Prosecutors charge that Hwang used falsified data showing cloning success to defraud investors of at least $2 million. However, the real outrage lies in how Hwang obtained the eggs for the research whose results he falsified. The media...

SAN FRANCISCO - A tiny biosciences company is developing a promising drug to fight diarrhea, a scourge among babies in the developing world, but it has made an astonishing number of powerful enemies because it grows the experimental drug in rice genetically engineered with a human gene. Environmental groups, corporate food interests and thousands of farmers across the country have succeeded in chasing Ventria Bioscience's rice farms out of two states. And critics continue to complain that Ventria is recklessly plowing ahead with a mostly untested technology that threatens the safety of conventional crops grown for food. "We just want...

Scientists have created a molecular switch that could play a key role in thousands of nanotech applications. The Mol-Switch project successfully developed a demonstrator to prove the principle, despite deep scepticism from specialist colleagues in biotechnology and biophysics. "Frankly, some researchers didn't think what we were attempting was possible because standard descriptions in physics, for example the Stokes equation for viscosity indicated that the system might not work. But viscous forces do not apply at the nano-scale," says Dr Keith Firman, Reader in Molecular Biotechnology at Portsmouth University and coordinator of the Mol-Switch project, funded under the European Commission’s FET...

April 3, 2006 — The news is being hailed as a medical milestone: Several years after receiving new bladders engineered entirely in a laboratory, seven young patients are all still healthy. It marks the first long-term success of total-organ tissue regeneration, an area of medicine that until now was more the stuff of science fiction than clinical reality. Dr. Anthony Atala, the director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, reports in tomorrow's issue of the medical journal The Lancet on the success of the new procedure, which was performed on children born with...

A Chinese cosmetics company has been using skin taken from the bodies of executed convicts to develop beauty products for sale in Europe, a London newspaper reported. An agent for the company informed customers it is developing collagen for lip and wrinkle treatments from skin taken from prisoners after they had been shot. The agent said some of the company‘s products have been exported to Britain, and that the use of skin from condemned convicts was “traditional" and nothing to “make such a big fuss about,“ the Guardian reported In addition to ethical concerns, there is the potential risk of...

NEW YORK — German scientists say cells from the testes of mice can behave like embryonic stem cells. If the same holds true in humans, it could provide a controversy-free source of versatile cells for use in treating disease. Embryonic stem cells can give rise to virtually any tissue in the body and scientists believe they may offer treatments for diseases like Parkinson's and diabetes and spinal cord injuries. But to harvest the cells, human embryos must be destroyed. Some religious groups and others oppose that. The new research into testicular cells, published online Friday by the journal Nature, comes...

LONDON, March 15, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - On March 8th, International Women's Day, a coalition of abortion-supporting and pro-life women, concerned at the growing exploitation of women in biotechnology launched a new campaign against the harvesting and marketing of human eggs. The campaign, "Hands off our ovaries!" highlights the short and long-term risks involved in egg harvesting and its significance for the health and dignity of women. Concerned feminist representatives have joined together on this common ground, outraged by the casual attitude of the biotech industry towards the female body. Like-minded leaders and groups from around the world are invited to...

02 March 2006, 12:34 Patriarch Alexy: New biotechnologies should not infringe upon human dignity Moscow, March 2, Interfax - Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow and All Russia has called upon medics to respect human dignity in introducing new biotechnologies. ‘The rapid development of biotechnologies challenges traditional religious awareness. Any evaluation of this development from the religious and moral point of view is possible only in dialogue between theologians, medics and scientists’, the patriarch says in his message to the International Conference on Development of Biotechnologies: Challenges to Christian Ethics, which has opened on Thursday in Moscow. According to Alexy II,...

China, with lower regulatory hurdles, is racing to a lead in gene therapy. Once a week, Hashmukh Patel, a 62-year-old retired semiconductor engineer from Silicon Valley, travels with his wife, Bena, from their Beijing hotel to Beijing-Haidian Hospital. They ride the crowded elevator to the ninth floor, enter a pleasant, sun-filled ward with private rooms, and Patel gets an injection that he hopes will save his life. Suffering from late-stage cancer of the esophagus, he has come to Beijing for a Chinese gene-therapy drug called Gendicine that's supposed to kill tumor cells. Patel tried just about everything before coming to...

  Both in consumption and variety, biotech is busting out all over -- and we're reaping a host of benefits from cheaper and better food to land and forest preservation.   Approved biotech crops in 2004 globally occupied 200 million acres, up from just 167 million acres the year before, an incredible forty-sevenfold increase since 1996.   In the United States, as well, biotech acreage increases annually. Most of our corn, about four-fifths of our cotton, and almost 90 percent of our soybeans are transgenic. That means a gene or genes from another organism has been spliced into them to give them new...

Exploiting biology's own chemical toolbox, researchers have developed a new technique that will allow them to modify specific sequences within a DNA molecule. The approach will not only help reveal the impact of biochemical alterations to DNA, but could have far-reaching implications for DNA-based medical diagnosis and nanobiotechnology. Combining chemistry with biotechnology, Saulius Klimasauskas, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) international research scholar at the Institute of Biotechnology in Vilnius, Lithuania, and chemists at the Institute of Organic Chemistry in Aachen, Germany, have harnessed a group of essential enzymes to add various chemical groups to DNA, thereby altering its function....

Scientists have created a “miracle mouse” that can regenerate amputated limbs or badly damaged organs, making it able to recover from injuries that would kill or permanently disable normal animals. The experimental animal is unique among mammals in its ability to regrow its heart, toes, joints and tail.

A team of South Korean scientists has created genetically altered pig clones, which produce an exorbitantly expensive substance that helps patients fight cancer. The team, led by professor Park Chang-sik at Chungnam National University, Wednesday said they cloned four female piglets that will secrete GM-CSF in their milk in a year. GM-CSF is a protein that stimulates the bone marrow to produce several kinds of white blood cells and prolong their survival outside the bone marrow.

NEW YORK - Shares of Biogen Idec and Elan soared on Tuesday as the companies said they had completed part of a safety review of their multiple sclerosis drug Tysabri--a medicine that has been demanded by some patients since it was pulled by the companies in February. But some doctors and analysts still say it is important to be cautious about the meaning of the safety review--especially since scientists are still combing through data testing Tysabri in Crohn's disease, a gastrointestinal disorder, and rheumatoid arthritis. Biogen and Elan have finished the safety review of the drug they began when they...

Scientists seeking a simple solution to the tricky task of separating single cells from a herd of others have found a way of making light of the problem. The new technique dubbed the "optoelectronic tweezer" combines a relatively low intensity light source with photo electricity to allow scientists to literally corral the cells they want to study, and could have major medical implications. "Our design has a strong practical advantage in that, unlike optical tweezers, a simple light source such as a light-emitting diode ... is powerful enough," said Pei Yu Chiou, part of the team led by Ming Wu...