Scientists may have created promising alternative to embryonic stem cells, studies indicate.
The Washington Post (3/2, A5, Stein) reports that two teams of scientists "have developed what appears to be a safer way to create a promising alternative to embryonic stem cells." The work that is being detailed in two Nature papers is expected "to have a massive impact on this field." It also "comes at a politically sensitive moment" -- the scientific community is "anxiously waiting for President Obama to follow through on his promise to lift restrictions on federal funding for research on human embryonic stem cells." Some who oppose "such a move immediately pointed to the work as the latest evidence" that an alternative is plausible, making the issue a moot point.
For years, scientists have scrambled to develop ways to generate "stem cell treatments without using embryos," BBC News (3/1) added. "In 2007, teams in Japan and the US managed to genetically modify skin cells to be pluripotent." These induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS) were to become "a new source of stem cells for use in research." But "the technique used viruses to genetically modify the cells." This "Trojan horse" method, according to AFP (3/2), essentially "modifies their DNA in such a way that they cannot be given to patients without boosting the risk of cancer." Now, researchers have found a way to circumvent that problem.
In fact, "the teams in Edinburgh and Toronto had been working separately on iPS cells, until Andras Nagy from Toronto had a chance meeting with Keisuke Kaji, head of the Edinburgh group," the UK's Financial Times (3/2, Cookson) points out. "They found that each had independently solved half the problem." Dr. Kaji's team "discovered how to deliver the four crucial reprogramming genes without using a virus," while Dr. Nagy and his lab mates at the Mount Sinai Hospital were "able to remove all trace of the added genes from the new iPS cells, which avoids disrupting the cells' own genetic machinery."
They were able to do so by using "a snippet of DNA from, of all things, a cabbage looper moth, which delivers the genes needed to reprogram cells into stem cells," the Canadian Press (3/2) reports. More specifically, the "team used a jumping gene, a mobile piece of DNA also known as a transposon," the Globe and Mail (3/1, McIlroy) added. Apparently, "in moths, corn, and other species, these genes hop from chromosome to chromosome, inserting themselves randomly into the genome." During the current experiment, the team "inserted the four reprogramming genes into a jumping gene from a moth," and later "put the jumping gene and its cargo into a skin cell." Eventually, the "jumping gene cut and pasted the stem cell genes into a chromosome in the skin cell. The scientists were then able to coax the skin cell back to its embryonic state, giving it the superhero-like ability to turn into many types of cells."
And, "once the genes had done their job, the scientists removed them, leaving the cells healthy and intact," the UK's Guardian (3/1, Sample) added. A member of the "lobby group Comment on Reproductive Ethics" maintains that there are "some scientists who like to hold on to what they've got, but" she doesn't "think people are going to waste time on embryonic stem cells any more."
Similarly, scientific "experts say the elegant discovery will quickly be adopted by labs around the world and will accelerate further advances in biology's hottest field," according to the Toronto Star (3/1, Ogilvie, Hall). Alan Trounson, "president of the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine," said, "It's a very innovative way of delivering the gene products that are needed for reprogramming adult cells into embryonic stem cell-like cells. Well done to the Nagy group."
To recap: Induced pluripotent stem cells (created from genetically "reprogramming" an adult cell back to its pluripotent stem cell stage) were first produced in 2006 from mouse cells and in 2007 from human cells. As of this month, safer methods of this technology have been discovered.
Why is this significant? "Scientists have demonstrated that they can reprogram ordinary human skin skills into pluripotent stems cells which will not cause tumors or rejection. There are several ethical stem cell research alternatives that already have successfully treated thousands of patients. By using adult sources of stem cells (including umbilical cord blood, amniotic fluid and placental sources) it has been possible to treat, and sometimes even cure, numerous maladies and pathologies, from spinal cord injury to cardiac disease, pediatric brain tumors to cerebral palsy, to the widely-known successes in blood diseases." -National Catholic Bioethic Center
"The ultimate measure of a man or woman is not where he or she stands in moments of comfort and convenience; It's where they stand in times of challenges and controversy." - Osagyefuo Amoatio Ofori (Akyem Abuakwa, Ghana)
Excerpts from Government's cross-examination:
DAY FIVE: Tuesday, April 6, 2004
Q. Now, you have encountered situations in which you are performing a D&E and the fetus is removed intact except that the head of the fetus gets stuck at the internal cervical os, correct?
A. Correct.
Q. When that has happened you have preceeded with the D&E procedure in one of three ways, correct?
A. If you can tell me the three ways I would be happy to.
Q. One method would be to pull on the baby so that the head breaks off from the rest of the body; is that right?
A. Yes.
Q. And then, you will go inside the uterus with the forceps and remove the head?
A. Correct.
Q. The next method is that you would use scissors to puncture the base of the skull?
A. Correct.
Q. And then, you will stick a suction cannula into the opening and drain the brain tissue, and then you will have the head come out.
A. Did you say "Drain the brain tissue"?
Q. Then, you will drain the brain tissue?
A. Yes.
~
Q. And the third method is that you take a crushing instrument, put that instrument inside the cervical os, crush the baby's head, and pull the head through the cervix, correct?
A. That would be the third possible, although physically that would virtually never be the case. It
would be one of the first two. Those are my three options, but it would be one of the first two that I could realistically do.
~
Q. Doctor, if a woman's cervix was so dilated the fetus could be delivered in intact it would not be necessary to collapse the skull because the fetus could pass through the cervix, right?
A. Correct.
Q. But you would not allow the fetus to pass intact if the fetus were at or about 24 weeks in gestation, correct?
A. Correct.
Q. Because if the fetus were close to 24 weeks, and you were performing a transvaginal surgical abortion you would be concerned about delivering the fetus entirely intact because that might result in a live baby that may survive, correct?
A. You said I was performing an abortion, so since the objective of the abortion is to not have a live fetus, then that would be correct.
Q. In your opinion, if you were performing a surgical abortion at 23 or 24 weeks and the cervix was so dilated that the head could pass without compression, you would do whatever you needed to do in order to make sure that the live baby was not delivered, wouldn't you?
A. Whatever I needed, meaning whatever surgical procedures I needed to do as part of the procedure? Yes. Then, the answer would be: Yes.
Q. And one step you would take to avoid delivery of a live baby would to be to deliver or hold the fetus' head on the internal side of the cervical os in order to collapse the skull; is that right?
A. Yes, because the objective of my procedure is to perform an abortion.
Q. And that would ensure that you did not deliver a live baby?
A. Correct.
"A number of abortionists have converted to pro-life activism since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion. The most famous such convert is Dr. Bernard Nathanson, co-founder of the abortion lobby NARAL. Nathanson renounced his abortion practice in the 1970s and subsequently converted to Catholicism in 1996." -Human Life International
(Read Dr. Nathanson's powerful testimony)
the birthday girls :-)
- "They (the disciples) had forgotten to bring bread, and they had only one loaf with them in the boat. He (Jesus) enjoined them, "Watch out, guard against the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod." They concluded among themselves that it was because they had no bread. When he became aware of this he said to them, "Why do you conclude that it is because you have no bread? Do you not yet understand or comprehend? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes and not see, ears and not hear? And do you not remember, when I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many wicker baskets full of fragments you picked up?"
- They answered him, "Twelve."
- "When I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many full baskets of fragments did you pick up?"
- They answered (him), "Seven."
- He said to them, "Do you still not understand?"
"Birthdays keep us childlike. They remind us that what is important is not what we do or accomplish, not what we have or who we know, but that we are, here and now. On birthdays let us be grateful for the gift of life."
- Henri Nouwen
the happy couple :-)
the new car
Jeff had to get to bed early...but here are 3/4 of us!
"Keeping to one woman is a small price for so much as seeing one woman." -G.K. Chesteron, Orthodoxy
I went to a talk last night at the Newman center called "The Polish Pope and the Prince of Paradox (aka JPII and G.K. Chesterton) discuss Sex, Marriage, Men & Women."I have sometimes thought it would be very fine to take an ordinary house, a very poor, commonplace house in West Kensington, say, and make it symbolic. Not artistic - Heaven - O Heaven forbid... No: my idea (which is much cheaper) is to make a house... really explain its own essential meaning. Mystical or ancient sayings should be inscribed on every object, the more prosaic the object the better; and the more coarsely and rudely the inscription was traced the better. 'Hast thou sent the Rain upon the Earth?' should be inscribed on the Umbrella-Stand: perhaps on the Umbrella. 'Even the Hairs of your Head are all numbered' would give a tremendous significance to one's hairbrushes: the words about 'living water' would reveal the music and sanctity of the sink: while 'Our God is a consuming Fire' might be written over the kitchen-grate, to assist the mystic musings of the cook - Shall we ever try that experiment, dearest. Perhaps not, for no words would be golden enough for the tools you had to touch: you would be beauty enough for one house..."
And this is at the very end of the letter when (writing in third person) he describes to her the moment he met her~
(Chesterton Day By Day is a great site for reading more of his thoughts too. The quote at the top of the page was my favorite quote from the talk last night, and is also the excerpt for my b-day. I liked the coincidence.)Once in the course of conversation she looked straight at him and he said to himself as plainly as if he had read it in a book: 'If I had anything to do with this girl I should go on my knees to her: if I spoke with her she would never deceive me: if I depended on her she would never deny me: if I loved her she would never play with me: if I trusted her she would never go back on me: if I remembered her she would never forget me. I may never see her again. Goodbye.' It was all said in a flash: but it was all said....
Two years, as they say in the playbills, is supposed to elapse. And here is the subject of this memoir sitting on a balcony above the sea. The time, evening. He is thinking of the whole bewildering record of which the foregoing is a brief outline: he sees how far he has gone wrong and how idle and wasteful and wicked he has often been: how miserably unfitted he is for what he is called upon to be. Let him now declare it and hereafter for ever hold his peace.
But there are four lamps of thanksgiving always before him. The first is for his creation out of the same earth with such a woman as you. The second is that he has not, with all his faults, 'gone after strange women.' You cannot think how a man's self restraint is rewarded in this. The third is that he has tried to love everything alive: a dim preparation for loving you. And the fourth is--but no words can express that. Here ends my previous existence. Take it: it led me to you.
"Sometimes language is like a scalpel-- and you should use it with the same precision." -Dr. Larry Nichols, pathologist
"Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment." -Dr. David Steed, vascular surgeon
"Gastric bypass surgery at a cost of $28,000 is covered by insurance. A typical nutrition visit at $50 an hour isn't. We must shift the paradigm from care that is fragmented and reactionary to care that is prevention focused, coordinated and planned." -Dr. Linda Siminerio, director of the University of Pittsburgh Diabetes InstituteMore soon... including an exciting 'guest blog' from Beth!
(miraculous medal chapel, basilica of the immaculate conception, d.c.)
abortion must end." As she spoke, a large group of women stood behind her with signs that read "I regret my abortion." These same people, along with men saying "I regret lost fatherhood" led the march from the National Mall to the Capitol building, sharing their testimonies on the steps of the Supreme Court following the march.
How awesome it is that we can meet each other in His heart..."How often have I thought that I may owe all the graces I've received to the prayers of a person who begged them from God for me, and whom I shall know only in heaven."-Saint Therese of Lisieux
('Marley and Me' was a cute movie, but not half as cute as 'Marlo and Christy'!!!)"God wants to reach out to others through your hands. He wants to speak to others through your lips, and God wants others to look into your eyes and see Him... Give God Permission..."
~John Cardinal O'Connor
January 17: Be Yourself
Often we want to be somewhere other than where we are, or even to be someone other than who we are. We tend to compare ourselves constantly with others and wonder why we are not as rich, as intelligent, as simple, as generous, or as saintly as they are. Such comparisons make us feel guilty, ashamed, or jealous. It is very important to realize that our vocation is hidden in where we are and who we are. We are unique human beings, each with a call to realize in life what nobody else can, and to realize it in the concrete context of the here and now.
We will never find our vocations by trying to figure out whether we are better or worse than others. We are good enough to do what we are called to do. Be yourself!
"I'm really only what God thinks of me. As for loving me more because He has given me charge of souls... I do not share your opinion. I think He has made me rather your servant. It is for you and not for myself that He has bestowed these virtues which make me pleasing in your eyes."
In vestments usually green, the color of hope and growth, the Church counts the thirty-three or thirty-four Sundays of Ordinary Time, inviting her children to meditate upon the whole mystery of Christ – his life, miracles and teachings – in the light of his Resurrection.
If the faithful are to mature in the spiritual life and increase in faith, they must descend the great mountain peaks of Easter and Christmas in order to "pasture" in the vast verdant meadows of tempus per annum, or Ordinary Time.
Sunday by Sunday, the Pilgrim Church marks her journey through the tempus per annum as she processes through time toward eternity.
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