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(See all these news nuggets and more by clicking the excerpt link below): 1. BBC News: “Darwin Teaching ‘Divides Opinion’” Darwinism is a controversial topic, and many believe creation should be taught in the classroom. But why is that news? 2. ScienceDaily: “Junk DNA Mechanism that Prevents Two Species from Reproducing Discovered” Has the U.S. government finally supported creationist research? Alas, no, but the results of a National Institutes of Health study fit squarely within the young-earth creation framework. 3. PhysOrg: “Charles Darwin Really Did Have Advanced Ideas about the Origin of Life” Charles Darwin was convinced that life’s origin...

Human eggs and sperm have been grown in the laboratory in research which could change the face of parenthood. It paves the way for a cure for infertility and could help those left sterile by cancer treatment to have children who are biologically their own. But it raises a number of moral and ethical concerns. These include the possibility of children being born through entirely artificial means, and men and women being sidelined from the process of making babies. Opponents argue that it is wrong to meddle with the building blocks of life and warn that the advances taking place...

Obama is, in the street vernacular, a useful idiot. Does he actually do anything?

A University of Nebraska Medical Center research team led by Iqbal Ahmad, Ph.D., professor of ophthalmology and visual sciences, has reprogrammed regular body cells to resemble embryonic stem cells without the use of potentially harmful foreign genetic material. The research, published in STEM CELLS, suggests that cells taken from a patient's eye can be "reprogrammed" to replace or restore cells lost to degenerative diseases. The research is the first proof in principle that somatic, or body cells, can be transformed into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) simply through the influence of the microenvironment in which the sampled cells are cultured....

(For all these stories and more, click on the excerpt link below) 1. BBC News: “Primate Fossil ‘Not an Ancestor’” Remember “Ida,” the missing link that wasn’t? In a Nature letter, scientists attack the lofty claims that surrounded the announcement of the fossil primate. 2. Did the Baby Mammoth, Lyuba, Suffocate in a Dust Storm? In a special guest news analysis, creationist (and mammoth expert) Michael Oard considers the well-preserved mammoth “Lyuba” (whom we first discussed in A Mammoth Discovery). The occasion? Lyuba’s worldwide debut. 3. National Geographic News: “Chimps Display Humanlike Good Will” Chimps, especially mothers and their offspring,...

A team led by scientists from The Scripps Research Institute has developed a method that dramatically improves the efficiency of creating stem cells from human adult tissue, without the use of embryonic cells. The research makes great strides in addressing a major practical challenge in the development of stem-cell-based medicine. The findings were published in an advance, online issue of the journal Nature Methods on October 18, 2009. The new technique, which uses three small drug-like chemicals, is 200 times more efficient and twice as fast as conventional methods for transforming adult human cells into stem cells (in this case...

News to Note, October 17, 2009: A weekly feature examining news from the biblical viewpoint (fascinating STEM CELL piece in story #5!)...

Surgeons report success in first human bone growth procedure using fat stem cells--with no culturing necessary Stem cells so far have been used to mend tissues ranging from damaged hearts to collapsed tracheas. Now the multifaceted cells have proved successful at regrowing bone in humans. In the first procedure of its kind, doctors at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center replaced a 14-year-old boy's missing cheekbones—in part by repurposing stem cells from his own body. The technique, should it be approved for widespread use, could benefit some seven million people in the U.S. who need more bone—everyone from cancer patients to...

Live-cell fluorescence imaging identifies bona fide reprogrammed cells.Fluorescence imaging could help resolve whether iPS cells have been properly programmed.Alamy The next tools for reprogramming cells to an embryonic-like state might just be a camera and a set of fluorescently tagged antibodies. Researchers imaged more than a million human cells in vitro as they changed from skin tissue cells, known as fibroblasts, into colonies of induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells. As expected, many similar-looking colonies appeared, but only very few consisted of fully reprogrammed iPS cells. After assessing which were which, researchers led by Thorsten Schlaeger and George Daley of the...

Oct 5, 2009 — Three stories touching on philosophy of science were reported recently.  They show that simplistic ideas, and even terms deployed, can be misleading.  That’s why philosophers still have a role in curbing the pretensions of scientists, and clarifying scientific issues and terms lest policy-makers and the public get wrong ideas. Are all invasive species bad?:  We are taught to think that “alien” animals or plants introduced into another country pose a threat.  Often they do, but Mark Davis at New Scientist reminded readers that the honeybee was introduced into the Americas.  He said, “you may be surprised...

ScienceDaily (Oct. 2, 2009) — Human umbilical cord blood cells may be far more versatile than previous research has indicated. Scientists report that they have successfully reprogrammed human umbilical cord blood cells into cells with properties similar to human embryonic stem cells. The results are significant as they identify cord blood as a convenient source for generating cells with a theoretically limitless potential. Umbilical cord blood cells can successfully be reprogrammed to function like embryonic stem cells, setting the basis for the creation of a comprehensive bank of tissue-matched, cord blood-derived induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells for off-the-shelf applications, report...

Haifa scientists have adapted an innovative Japanese gene-implantation technique and succeeded in "turning back the clock" for human skin cells, reprogramming them into artificial embryonic stem cells and then switching them into heart cells in the lab. Although implementing this clinically to repair damaged human hearts is at least a decade or two away, the Israeli accomplishment can already be utilized for in-depth study of genetic diseases and the development of personalized drugs for inherited disorders, such as those involving irregular heartbeat.

Stem cells have a unique ability: when they divide, they can either give rise to more stem cells, or to a variety of specialised cell types. In both mice and humans, a layer of cells at the base of the skin contains stem cells that can develop into the specialised cells in the layers above. Scientists at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Monterotondo, in collaboration with colleagues at the Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnologicas (CIEMAT) in Madrid, have discovered two proteins that control when and how these stem cells switch to being skin cells. The findings,...

Researchers are inching ever closer to bringing the latest stem-cell technologies from bench to bedside — and are, in the process, learning more about some diseases that long have remained medical black boxes. This week, scientists at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute (HSCI) reported the first success in generating new populations of insulin-producing cells using skin cells of Type 1 diabetes patients. The achievement involved the newer embryo-free technique for generating stem cells, and marked the first step toward building a treatment that could one day replace a patient's faulty insulin-making cells with healthy, functioning ones. (See the top 10...

Alternative tissues shown to yield reprogrammed cells aplenty. Fat cells are more easily turned into iPS cells than fibroblasts.Punchstock Fat cells and pigment-producing skin cells can be reprogrammed into stem cells much faster and more efficiently than the skin cells that are usually used — suggesting large bellies and little black moles could provide much-needed material for deriving patient-specific stem cells."More than one type of adult somatic cell can serve as a target for reprogramming to a pluripotent state," says William Lowry, a stem-cell biologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was not involved in the research. "You...

A Foley physician said what appears to be the first case of HIV/AIDS cure in the world is getting little mention in the media. Dr. Awadhesh K. Gupta, medical director at Foley Walk-In Med Care, said he first heard of the medical breakthrough in April when he attended the Annual Conference of the American College of Physicians in Internal Medicine in Philadelphia. It’s a conference Gupta tries to attend every year. “This is the most prestigious organization of physicians in Internal Medicine and is responsible for certifying post graduate training in Internal Medicine. It is also one of the oldest,”...

Human Trial of Embryonic Stem Cell Research Stopped Due to Animal Problems by Steven ErteltLifeNews.com Editor August 27, 2009 Email RSSPrint Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- More information is coming to light about why the Food and Drug Administration has made the decision to stop human trials involving embryonic stem cells. The reasons mirror the concerns pro-life advocates have had for years with the research, which has yet to help any patients.Geron Corporation had applied for permission to try injections of embryonic stem cells, which can only be obtained by destroying the lives of unborn children at their earliest stage...

BOSTON (Reuters) - Senator Edward Kennedy's death marks the twilight of one of America's most fabled political families, with no heirs to the Kennedy name poised to emerge with the same mix of gravitas, ambition and celebrity. Kennedy, 77, one of the most effective lawmakers in U.S. history and the brother of assassinated President John F. Kennedy, died late on Tuesday after battling brain cancer.

Sam Casey / Dr. David Stevens Washington D.C., Aug 21, 2009 / 06:20 am (CNA).- A federal lawsuit seeking to overturn the National Institutes of Health (NIH) guidelines for public funding of human embryonic stem cell research was filed on Wednesday. The suit claims the regulations violate a federal law which bars the institute from funding research in which human embryos are destroyed.Plaintiffs in the suit include the Christian Medical Association (CMA) and embryo adoption agency Nightlight Christian Adoptions.  Dr. James L. Sherley, a senior scientist at the Boston Biomedical Research Institute and Dr. Theresa Deisher, founder of AVM...

ONE way for surgeons to repair injured knees is to take cartilage and bone from another part of the knee and transplant it in the damaged area. Now companies are developing potentially simpler knee patches: small, off-the-shelf plugs engineered to mimic the composition of human bone and cartilage. These ready-made cylinders can be inserted in an arthroscopic procedure; they are often used after a sports injury. They are known as osteochondral scaffolds, because they support new bone and cartilage as it grows. Orthomimetics, a company in Cambridge, England, has developed a scaffold approved for use in Europe that resulted from...

Drug found that kills breast cancer stem cells.PunchstockA new approach for identifying drugs that specifically attack cancer stem cells, the cellular culprits that are thought to start and maintain tumour growth, could change the way that drug companies and scientists search for therapies in the war against cancer."We now have a systematic method that had not been previously known that allows us to find agents that target cancer stem cells," says Piyush Gupta of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and first author of the study, published online today in Cell1.Applying the technique, Gupta...

Knocking out genes with a role in cancer prevention helps produce stem cells.Switching off the p53 pathway helped researchers to make stem-like cells.Wikimedia Commons Specialized adult cells made 'immortal' through the blockade of an antitumour pathway can be turned into stem-like cells quickly and efficiently.The findings — which should make it easier to generate patient-specific cells from any tissue type, including certain diseased cells that have proved difficult to transform — suggest that cellular reprogramming and cancer formation are inextricably linked.Since 2006, when Shinya Yamanaka of Japan's Kyoto University first created induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells1 — which can develop...

LA JOLLA — A team at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla says it bred live mice from mouse skin cells, advancing a technique that could offer an alternative to the controversial use of embryonic stem cells. The work, reported online yesterday by the journal Nature, involves reprogramming normal cells to create what are known as induced pluripotent stem cells.

Note: The following text is a quote: THE BRIEFING ROOM THE WHITE HOUSE Office of the Press Secretary _________________________________________________________________________ For Immediate Release July 30, 2009 MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES SUBJECT: Guidelines for Human Stem Cell Research As outlined in Executive Order 13505 of March 9, 2009, my Administration is committed to supporting and conducting ethically responsible, scientifically worthy human stem cell research, including human embryonic stem cell research, to the extent permitted by law. Pursuant to that order, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) published final "National Institutes of Health Guidelines for Human Stem Cell...

“No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this earth!” —President Ronald Reagan Life Legal Defense Foundation continues to watchdog the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine and in doing so found the latest attempt to promulgate embryonic stem cell research by “educating” children. Let us introduce you to Senate Bill 471. Titled “The California Stem Cell and Biotechnology Education and Workforce Development Act of 2009,” the purpose of SB 471 is purportedly to train up a new generation of...

The decision to offer New York women up to $10,000 to donate their eggs for stem cell research, payable by taxpayers, is "incredibly irresponsible and immoral," critics told FOXNews.com. New York's decision to offer women in the state up to $10,000 to donate their eggs for stem cell research, payable by taxpayers, is "incredibly irresponsible and immoral," critics told FOXNews.com. Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America, said the move -- the first of its kind nationwide -- treats women as "commodities, almost like cows" and could lead to cash-strapped women in other states to partake in similar programs....

Chinese scientists have created live mice from mature skin cells that had reverted to an embryonic-like state. The scientific success could further defuse controversy over harvesting embryonic stem cells, but also raises new ethical issues about potentially making clones selected for specific traits. Reprogramming stem cells has become popular over recent years, because it avoids the cloning or embryo-destruction techniques which have traditionally been used by scientists to create embryonic stem-cell lines. The Chinese experiments now prove that reprogrammed adult stem cells can be made to create live offspring with normal bodies, at least in mice. Two Chinese teams injected...

MUMBAI: For 15 years, Rakesh Singh (name changed) went about his high-pressure job as a senior engineer in a central government firm with a transplanted kidney. Daily, he would pop immuno-suppressant pills to prevent his body from rejecting the donated organ. Then, about 18 months ago, he was struck by an "explosive" form of cancer called multiple myeloma — big cysts erupted across and within his body, impairing his ability to sign and speak. Singh's disease put doctors in the city's Jaslok Hospital in a bind about what line of treatment to follow: reducing the immuno-suppressants to let his body...

Technical feat shows that the different route to stem cells can indeed make a full mammal body. Two teams of Chinese researchers have created live mice from induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, answering a lingering question about the developmental potential of the cells. Since Shinya Yamanaka of Kyoto University in Japan created the first iPS cells1 in 2006, researchers have wondered whether they could generate an entire mammalian body from iPS cells, as they have from true embryonic stem cells. Experiments reported online this week in Nature 2 and in Cell Stem Cell 3 suggest that, at least for mice,...

Two teams of Chinese researchers working separately have reprogrammed mature skin cells of mice to an embryonic-like state and used the resulting cells to create live mouse offspring. A picture released by Nature magazine shows Xiao Xiao, or "Tiny" in Chinese, the first baby mouse created from reprogrammed skin cells. The reprogramming may bring scientists one step closer to creating medically useful stem-cell lines for treating human disease without having to resort to controversial laboratory techniques. However, the advance poses fresh ethical challenges because the results could make it easier to create human clones and babies with specific genetic traits....

In a proof-of-concept study, Mayo Clinic investigators have demonstrated that induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells can be used to treat heart disease. iPS cells are stem cells converted from adult cells. In this study, the researchers reprogrammed ordinary fibroblasts, cells that contribute to scars such as those resulting from a heart attack, converting them into stem cells that fix heart damage caused by infarction. The findings appear in the current online issue of the journal Circulation. "This study establishes the real potential for using iPS cells in cardiac treatment," says Timothy Nelson, M.D., Ph.D., first author on the Mayo Clinic...

Leadership: Our new science czar, John Holdren, once backed compulsory sterilization and forced abortion as part of a government population-control program. The only thing missing was a Soylent Green recipe.In April, President Obama declared that "the days of science taking a back seat to ideology are over." In everything from stem cell research to climate change and energy policy, reason and science would triumph. The problem is that what the Obama administration considers science, as exemplified by the choice of Holdren, is troubling. In a recently rediscovered 1977 book, "Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment," co-authored with doomsters Paul and Anne Ehrlich,...

“The development of a human being begins with fertilization, a process by which the spermatozoon from the male and the oocyte from the female unite to give rise to a new organism, the zygote.” — Langman’s Medical Embryology, 7th edition, 1995 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For people who advocate the killing of embryonic human beings in the cause of biomedical research, the Holy Grail is an argument that would definitively establish that the human embryo, at least early in its development, is not a living human organism and therefore not a human being at all. The problem for these advocates is that all...

An age of medical miracles is dawning. Obama administration federal funding rules for embryonic stem cells, or ES cells, will open wide the money floodgates for "the most remarkable potential of any scientific discovery ever made with respect to human health." It has "the capacity to cure maladies of all sorts,including cancer, heart disease, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's," and spinal cord injuries. Or so says Sen. Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) among others. But paraplegics shouldn’t post their wheelchairs on EBay just yet. If these cures are just around the corner, this corner is far, far away. And that's according to ES cell researchers...

I'm going to try to do things a little different from now with the news diggs. I'm going to put the news articles in the first category, and the opinion articles in the second. For those of you having trouble keeping up with all the Diggs we throw at you, this should better help you prioritize your daily reading. http://diggsandburies.blogspot.com/

Bioethics: The former director of the National Institutes of Health, once an enthusiast for embryonic stem cells, now says their future has "dimmed." So why is the administration bailing out research into such therapies while troubled states like California have committed billions?Aside from creating or saving a few research jobs, the administration's decision to federally fund embryonic stem cell research is, as we've noted, a bailout of bad science. It throws money at an avenue of research that time and adult stem cell progress have passed by. Applauding the administration's move was Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., who echoed the claims...

The National Institutes of Health has issued guidelines for research on human embryos. One pro-family spokesman accuses NIH of ignoring the public on the matter. The guidelines, which are based on a presidential executive order, open the door for research that pro-life groups have fought against for years. Dr. David Prentice of the Family Research Council tells OneNewsNow those guidelines set up a system that creates an incentive for embryonic sacrifice. He goes on to say NIH simply did not listen to the public. "Of the 49,000 comments they got, 30,000 told them not to fund any human embryo research...

We hear a lot about "stem cells," which are front-and-center as a major policy debate in America, one that involves science, medicine, ethics, politics, and much more. What are the issues? What's at stake? What are embryonic and non-embryonic stem cells? What are the crucial differences and distinctions we need to make as a society and citizenry? Stem-cell technologies are some of the newest and fastest developing biotechnologies. Typically, along with genetic engineering and cloning, these technologies constitute the kind of 21st century advances that make this “the century of Biology.” A stem cell is a type of cell that...

London, England, Jul 11, 2009 / 04:09 am (CNA).- GE Healthcare has formed a biotech partnership to develop products based on human embryonic stem cells in hopes that their use will replace lab rats in drug development and toxic drug tests.The British-based medical research subsidiary of General Electric, GE Healthcare on June 30 announced a multi-year alliance with Geron Corporation to have Geron provide GE scientists with an undisclosed amount of human embryonic stem cells.According to CNSNews.com, GE Healthcare has said it hopes testing which uses human embryonic cells will spare lab rats from potentially toxic drug evaluations."This could...

Less than two years ago, it looked like the ethical debate over human embryonic stem cells might be coming to an end. In November 2007, two research groups, one at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and another at Kyoto University in Japan, announced that they had succeeded in directly reprogramming human skin cells into stem cells. Earlier this year, Canadian and British researchers reported even better news. They have developed a new way to create such cells without using viruses, which pose a risk of producing tumors by damaging the transformed cells' genes. Yesterday, as many as 700 new stem cell...

I read yesterday, that some people in England, who had access to a murdered baby, cannibalized parts from that baby to use in an experiment. Now, a lot of people would not be bothered by this, because the child was dead anyway, and besides, transplants are done all the time form donors. However there is one thing that makes this story wrong. The baby was killed just for the parts. Society has degenerated so low, as to honesty think that the killing of a child for experimental purposes is ok. What is it they say? If you do or say...

SVC = superior vena cavaAo = aortaPA = pulmonary arteryPV = pulmonary veinRA = right atriumLA = left atriumLV = left ventricleRV = right ventricle Enlarge ImageKey to the heart? Scientists have identified what they say are the heart's "master" stem cells.Credit: Lei Bu et al., Nature 460, 113 (2009) Scientists have identified a cardiac stem cell that gives rise to all of the major cell types in the human heart. The find opens the way to using patients' own cells to heal their damaged hearts. The cells in question express a protein, called Islet 1, which is present in...

Cell tracking shows that axolotl cells in a regrowing leg retain distinct roles. The amazing axolotl - legless, but never for long.Wikimedia Commons Salamanders have the ability to regrow amputated limbs – but what stops a tail growing from the stump, instead of a leg? A team of scientists are now a step closer to the answer. They studied tissue regeneration in axolotls (Ambystoma mexicanum), salamanders endemic to Mexico. The creatures heal so well because the muscle, bone and skin cells nearest to the amputation site revert into a more generic form, forming a clump of adult stem cells called...

Repair of Tissues by Adult Stem/Progenitor Cells (MSCs): Controversies, Myths, and Changing Paradigms Abstract Research on stem cells has progressed at a rapid pace and, as might be anticipated, the results have generated several controversies, a few myths and a change in a major paradigm. Some of these issues will be reviewed in this study with special emphasis on how they can be applied to the adult stem/progenitor cells from bone marrow, referred to as MSCs. The field of the adult stem/progenitor cells, referred to as MSCs, has progressed so rapidly and covered so many disciplines of basic research and...

Clearer terminology could alleviate confusionIn the exploding field of stem cell biology, confusion pervades among some newcomers, and even veterans. The question is simple: When do we call a cell - stem cell?Some would argue that a fertilized egg is the ultimate stem cell. It is totipotent, giving rise to the embryo and extra-embryonic structures. The more fate-restricted cells of the inner cell mass of a blastocyst give rise to all body tissues and, with appropriate culture, to embryonic stem cells, which are considered to be pluripotent. Yet another term is reserved for the even more fate-restricted often multipotent stem...

Science: The president's Council on Bioethics is summarily dismissed when it disagrees on the need for more federally funded embryonic stem cell research. The scientific method doesn't include firing those who disagree with you.Inspectors general are apparently not the only ones to pay for annoying the White House by doing their job. The 18-member council existed to provide the president with advice on the moral and ethical implications of the rapid advances in science and medical research. It exists no more. The council existed to ponder whether we should do something just because we can. Apparently President Obama wanted not...

Tuesday June 23, 2009 Obama Abruptly Sacks Bio-ethics Panel Critical of Embryonic Stem-Cell Research By Peter J. SmithWASHINGTON, D.C., June 23, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The White House has dismissed the members of the President’s US Council on Bioethics just a few months before their mandate expires, indicating their services are no longer required by the President and that he is looking for a more “practical� advisory board. The New York Times reported that Reid Cherlin, a White House press officer, told the paper that President Barack Obama saw them as "a philosophically leaning advisory group" designed by the previous...

DOCTORS have frozen sperm stem cells from a three-month-old baby so that he can father children when he is older. The infant is undergoing cancer treatment that is likely to leave him infertile. His parents hope that once he reaches adulthood, doctors will transplant the stem cells back to allow him to produce sperm. The breakthrough in America could give the infant the chance to have a family, but raises ethical questions because a baby is unable to give consent to such a procedure. Until now, doctors in Britain and America have offered fertility treatment to boys only once they...

"IT'S amazing, absolutely beautiful," says Doris Taylor, describing the latest addition to an array of tiny thumping hearts that sit in her lab, hooked up to an artificial blood supply. The rat hearts beat just as if there were inside a live animal, but even more remarkable is how each one has been made: by coating the stripped-down "scaffolding" of one rat's heart with tissue grown from another rat's stem cells. Taylor, a stem cell scientist at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, now wants to repeat the achievement on a much larger scale, by "decellularising" hearts, livers and other...

Look to the retina as a likely site for the first success in stem-cell therapy. "The eye is the best place to test proof-of-concept for stem cell-based therapies," says Martin Friedlander of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. Friedlander is co-founder of EyeCyte, also in La Jolla, whose investors include industry heavyweight Pfizer. Several laboratories are exploring stem-cell-derived transplants to delay or prevent blindness, and Pfizer recently put up funds for a project nearing human trials at University College London (UCL). Why the eye appeal? As organs go, it is easily accessible, somewhat protected from the immune system's...