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David Suzuki said, "Education has failed in a very serious way to convey the most important lesson science can teach: skepticism."  His observation is proven right every single day. I remember when I first learned that lesson at my mother's knee.  It was November 1959, and the first major food scare I can remember was set off by a report by the secretary of HEW, who, just before that Thanksgiving, warned that cranberries were "contaminated" with a weed-killer called aminotriazole. Without paying much attention to the fine print of the reports about the chemical, consumers shunned cranberries, which remained...

Which do you think is less expensive, not to mention preferable: a cure for cancer, Alzheimer's disease and diabetes, or caring for people with these diseases? Wouldn't it be better medical and public policy to direct more resources toward finding a cure for diseases that cost a lot to treat than to rely on a government insurance program, such as Obamacare, which seeks mainly to help pay the bills for people after they become ill? Isn't the answer obvious? Apparently not to many politicians trapped in an old paradigm that focuses too much on hospitals, doctors and medicines and too...

Latest on Embryonic Stem Cell Research Battles Court to Hear Lawsuit on Obama's Embryonic Stem Cell Funds http://LifeNews.com/bio-3223 Bill to Expand Obama's Embryonic Stem Cell Funds Appears Dead http://LifeNews.com/bio-3222

Direct Conversion May Make Embryonic Stem Cell Research Obsolete New York, NY -- Scientists made a major step towards making embryonic stem cell research obsolete when they used direct reprogramming to convert adult stem cells to an embryonic-like state. Now direct conversion is moving the ball forward. The process of direct conversion involves changing one kind of specialized stem cell into another kind -- and it eliminates the need for controversial embryonic stem cells, which some scientists promote because they can change into most any kind of cells. http://LifeNews.com/bio-3220

One possibility that Dr. Harer ruled out is that of a chariot accident. "If he fell from a speeding chariot going at top speed you would have what we call a tumbling injury -- he'd go head over heels. He would break his neck. His back. His arms, legs. It wouldn't gouge a chunk out of his chest." Instead, at his Toronto lecture, Harer brought up another, more exotic possibility -- that Tut was killed by a hippo. It's not as far out an idea as it sounds, hippos are aggressive, quick and territorial animals, and there is an artefact...

In a letter sent Friday to the leadership of the House of Representatives and the Senate, the deans of American medical schools, chief executives of U.S. hospitals and heads of organizations with names like the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the American Society of Human Genetics said that federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research “is essential” if scientists are to succeed in turning the cells into usable treatments. “The therapeutic potential of human embryonic stem cells is remarkable and could well prove to be one of the most significant paradigm-shifting advances in the history of...

Hi Free Republic, this is my first post here. I came to Free Republic to seek your opinions in a survey about foreign countries. Would you care to take it? http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/CBQ7HJZ

www.catholicnewsagency.com Researcher: Children of same-sex couples more likely to be homosexual Manhattan, Kans., Oct 22, 2010 / 06:04 am (CNA).- Social scientist Walter Schumm doesn't think his forthcoming paper ought to be provoking outraged responses he has already received. For years, researchers have admitted the possibility that he says he has now confirmed -- that children raised by homosexual parents are more apt to become homosexual themselves. Nevertheless, Schumm's article, which will be published in the November edition of the Journal of Biosocial Science, has triggered a firestorm since it began circulating online this summer. Irate advocates for the...

BONN, Germany, October 18, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Scientists announcing their success at achieving a new genetic defect-screening technique have at the same time admitted that many of the two-thirds of IVF embryos that fail to survive do so because of genetic abnormalities.Luca Gianaroli, chairman of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE), and Cristina Magli, an embryologist from Bologna, Italy, announced their success in a study of a genetic testing procedure called "comparative genomic hybridization (CGH) by microarray," after two women gave birth to healthy children following screening of the embryos using the technique.However, Gianaroli said in a statement...

Cancer is a man-made disease fuelled by the excesses of modern life, a study of ancient remains has found. Tumours were rare until recent times when pollution and poor diet became issues, the review of mummies, fossils and classical literature found. A greater understanding of its origins could lead to treatments for the disease, which claims more than 150,000 lives a year in the UK. Michael Zimmerman, a visiting professor at Manchester University, said: 'In an ancient society lacking surgical intervention, evidence of cancer should remain in all cases. 'The virtual absence of malignancies in mummies must be interpreted as...

BALTIMORE (CNS) -- Nineteen-month-old Mason Shaffer has no qualms about somersaulting off a couch in his family's Pennsylvania home. He's equally fearless when exploring new surroundings or playing a spirited round of peek-a-boo with his mother. It's a far cry from a year ago when Mason couldn't even sit up or roll over. Afflicted with malignant infantile osteopetrosis, a rare bone disease, Mason was severely underdeveloped and in significant pain. His life was saved through a transplant of adult stem cells obtained from umbilical-cord blood donated to a public collecting bank. "He's cured," said Sarah Shaffer, Mason's mother. "He's completely...

lifenews.com - Printer Friendly Page© V2.0 - CJ Website Designwww.cj-design.comPro-Life News: Adult Stem Cells, Bart Stupak, Pro-Life Day, Abby Johnson, Rome by Steven ErteltLifeNews.com Editor October 7, 2010 Email RSSPrint Best Kept Secret of Adult Stem Cells: They Are Treating Multiple Sclerosis by David PrenticeWashington, DC -- Adult stem cell success treating patients has been noted as “the best-kept secret in the galaxy” by Dr. Jean Peduzzi Nelson of Wayne State University. In her recent Senate testimony she described the case of Barry Goudy, who had relapsing-remitting MS. Barry had numerous relapses and medication was not helping his condition. He...

Downturn lasted 18 months; longest recession since World War II The “Great Recession” has ended, officially. At least, that's the word from the private research organization that calls the beginnings and endings of recessions, the National Bureau of Economic Research. The NBER said Monday that the recession which began in December 2007 ended in June 2009, which marked the beginning of an expansion. The announcement rules out the possibility of a so-called “double-dip” recession, because any new downturn would be seen as a brand new recession.

New Poll Finds Americans Continue to Oppose Tax Funding Embryonic Stem Cell Research Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- As Congress considers potential legislation that would repeal the law a federal judge has cited as standing in the way of the executive order President Barack Obama issued to force taxpayers to finance embryonic stem cell research, a new poll shows Americans don't want their tax dollars used to fund it. http://www.lifenews.com/bio3180.html

A U.S. Appeals court on Thursday temporarily lifted a judge's ban on federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research until it rules on the merits of the Obama administration's argument against the ban. U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth ruled last month that embryonic stem cell research violated federal law because it involved destroying human embryos. The Obama administration claimed that the ban would set back key research and cost more than a thousand jobs -- an argument that Lamberth rejected on Tuesday -- but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit agreed Tuesday to lift...

WASHINGTON – Seeking ways to spur economic growth ahead of the November elections, President Barack Obama will ask Congress to increase and permanently extend research and development tax credits for businesses, a White House official said Sunday. Obama will outline the $100 billion proposal during a speech on the economy Wednesday in Cleveland, the official said. The announcement is expected to be the first in a series of new measures Obama will propose this fall as the administration looks to jump-start an economy that the president himself has said isn't growing fast enough. In addition to making the research credits...

(Adds details) WASHINGTON, Sept 5 (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will ask the U.S. Congress on Wednesday to increase and permanently extend a tax credit for business research as a way of boosting job growth, an administration official said on Sunday. The proposal would cost $100 billion over 10 years, and Obama would pay for the plan by closing other corporate tax breaks, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Obama will call on Congress to increase to 17 percent from 14 percent one of two credit options available to businesses, the official said.

Poll: 57% of Americans Oppose Tax Funding of Embryonic Stem Cell Research Washington, DC -- On the week in which a federal judge ruled that President Barack Obama's executive order forcing Americans to pay for embryonic stem cell research with taxpayer funds violates a federal law, a new poll shows a majority of Americans opposed tax-funding the controversial and unproven research. http://LifeNews.com/bio3152.html

It takes the Congress and the president to enact or to change laws; the president can't do it alone and neither can an administrative agency. The August 23, 2010, decision of Royce C. Lamberth, chief judge of U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C, in Sherley v. Sebelius has legal significance for one main reason: it reasserts the principle, occasionally lost sight of, that laws passed by the Congress and signed by the president — good, bad, or indifferent — trump both executive orders and the actions of administrative agencies. It is hardly a novel principle, and its application here was...

A federal judge on Monday issued a temporary ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research, sidetracking President Barack Obama’s executive order which had expanded federal funding for human stem cell research last year. U.S. District Court Judge Royce C. Lamberth ruled that the order, which Obama signed in March 2009, violated a federal law that prohibits the use of federal funds for research practices that result in the destruction of a human embryo. According to the ruling, the Dickey-Wicker Amendment, which Congress passed in 1996, clearly prohibits the use of federal funds for stem cell research, regardless of...