Free Republic

Dog gets stem cell transplantBAINBRIDGE ISLAND, Wash. (AP) -- Darrell and Nina Hallett love their dog Comet and have reached deeply into their wallets to prove it.The couple spent $45,000 on a stem cell transplant for their golden retriever, who is recovering from lymphoma, a type of cancer that attacks the immune system.Dr. Edmund Sullivan, a Bellingham veterinarian, performed the transplant last summer, using stem cells from another golden retriever.Sue Hendrickson, a friend of the Halletts, owns Comet's mother and 11 other dogs. She spent months tracking down 40 of Comet's relatives to donate blood, eventually finding three perfect matches....

Rush slams Democrats, receives cheers RADIO HOST MAKES FIRST SJ APPEARANCE By Brad Kava Mercury News Preaching optimism and slamming Democrats, conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh was greeted like a rock star by a packed San Jose Civic Auditorium audience Tuesday night. ``We are in the midst of a seminal historic shift in this country,'' Limbaugh, 54, told a crowd that paid $40 a ticket and welcomed him with a standing ovation. ``The Democrat party and the media have lost their monopoly. They don't rule the roost anymore.'' Other than one swear word and a slightly off-color story about...

Megan Cardy is one of the lucky ones. Her doctors found a match. Megan was 14 when her leukemia returned. Having already endured chemotherapy, she dreaded the prospect of another long course of treatment. So Megan and her parents decided on a bone-marrow transplant that would provide blood stem cells to enable her body to produce healthy blood. After her doctors spent six months searching the donor lists for stem cells close enough to Megan's own tissue, she got the stem cells she needed — but not from a bone-marrow donor. Instead, the source was umbilical cord blood, a byproduct...

Patterns: Smoking: Hazardous to Your CatBy JOHN O'NEIL ats whose owners smoke are up to three times as likely to develop lymphoma, a form of cancer, as cats living with nonsmokers, a new study has found.Dr. Antony S. Moore of the Tufts University Veterinary School, an author of the study, said cats in many ways were better subjects than people for studying secondhand smoke."Cats basically hang around inside the house, so they don't get exposed to as many possible environmental hazards," he said. "You can often smell the smoke on their fur, and when you consider that they're grooming...