Hope for HIV Infection with Adult Stem Cells
Two recent news stories signal hope for the treatment of HIV infection with adult stem cells. The first is a story about two men who had stem cell transplants for blood cancers and are now off anti-viral drugs because there is no trace of the HIV virus in either man. From USA Today:Two HIV-positive patients in the United States who underwent bone marrow transplants for cancer have stopped anti-retroviral therapy and still show no detectable sign of the HIV virus, researchers said Wednesday.The Harvard University researchers stressed it was too early to say the men have been cured, but said it was an encouraging sign that t...
Source: Mary Meets Dolly - July 10, 2013 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Tags: Stem cells, Adult Source Type: blogs
Dan Brown's Inferno Portrays Transhumanism in Positive Light
WARNING! SPOILERS AHEAD. (That is if you want to read Inferno of your own free will.)So I recently had the displeasure of reading Dan Brown's new novel, Inferno, because I heard it had transhumanist themes. Essentially, it was the same book as Angels and Demons and The Da Vinci Code except this time the backdrop was Florence, Venice and Istanbul instead of Rome. In characteristic Dan Brown style, the research was shoddy, the Catholic Church was the bad guy, and complex issues and philosophies were given the shallowest of treatments leaving the average reader believing in fiction set up as fact. As a result, I found this bo...
Source: Mary Meets Dolly - July 8, 2013 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Tags: Transhumanism Source Type: blogs
When Life Gets in the Way of Blogging
I have been absent from blogging this week, forgive me. My hubby has been stranded with car troubles across the state and I have been left trying to navigate all the cooking, cleaning, yard work and endless summer sports camps and tournaments all by myself. In addition, I have been getting ready for a contingency of out of town guests coming for the weekend.I have not been totally idle though. Chelsea (Reflections of a Paralytic) and I have recorded an episode of BioTalk and I have been reading Dan Brown's newest disaster, Inferno, in which transhumanism is a major theme, and I plan to write a review when I can sit down an...
Source: Mary Meets Dolly - June 28, 2013 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Source Type: blogs
Funding Restrictions Stifle Cloning Research
Unlike many other countries, the United States has no federal restrictions on cloning. Scientists can clone human embryos as much as they want, provided they have the human eggs to do it, and in many states they could transfer those embryos to a female volunteer if they wanted.The only thing that we have in the U.S. are funding restrictions. The very important Dickey-Wicker Amendment, a rider on the Omnibus Appropriations Act, prohibits any federal funding from going to research where human embryos are created or destroyed. This means that the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a major source of funding for research in t...
Source: Mary Meets Dolly - June 20, 2013 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Tags: Cloning Source Type: blogs
U.S. Supreme Court Rejects Gene Patents!
After years of back and forth, the question of whether naturally occurring human genes are patentable has been decided by the Supreme Court. Most Americans are not aware that about a quarter of their genes have been patented by companies and research institutions over the last few decades by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.The Supreme Court has made the right decision and unanimously decided that your genes are not patentable.Continue reading at LifeNews>> (Source: Mary Meets Dolly)
Source: Mary Meets Dolly - June 13, 2013 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Tags: Genetics Source Type: blogs
Child of Anonymous Sperm Donor: Right to Know Biological Parents
It is undeniable that we humans have an innate desire to know from whom we came. Many people who are adopted or have only one parent will tell you that they feel they are missing a piece of a puzzle. Genealogy websites like Ancestry.com exist because of our fascination with our genetic ancestors. Every time I see an ad for Ancestry.com, a place where you "Find your ancestors stories" and "Discover yours," I feel that tug to find out more about my grandparents and great-grandparents. My daughter's junior year project for high school was a presentation and paper on the immigration of both sides of...
Source: Mary Meets Dolly - June 10, 2013 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Tags: Reproductive Technologies Source Type: blogs
Supreme Court: Legal to Take Your DNA if You are Arrested
This week the Supreme Court decided that it is not a violation of the 4th Amendment for law enforcement to take a DNA sample from people who are arrested. The Court said that a cheek swab was no different than mug shots or fingerprinting; its purpose is to identify the person in custody. From the New York Times:The police may take DNA samples from people arrested in connection with serious crimes, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday in a 5-to-4 decision.The federal government and 28 states authorize the practice, and law enforcement officials say it is a valuable tool for investigating unsolved crimes. But the court said the...
Source: Mary Meets Dolly - June 6, 2013 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Tags: Genetic Testing Source Type: blogs
Four Favors for the Frazzled Blogger
I think writing is hard. I was a chemistry major not an English major. And the niche I made for myself (or maybe a ditch I dug for myself) in the blogging world commenting on the latest in biotechnology from a Catholic perspective is not an easy one. My ditch is frequently flooded with sewage. I made my bed. There are days I hate lying in it. (It maybe that I am particularly frazzled right now because of the end-of-the-school year frenzy that happens every June. All you parents know exactly what I am talking about. It is a yearly occurrence, but somehow I am always caught unprepared.)There are things that readers can do to...
Source: Mary Meets Dolly - June 3, 2013 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Source Type: blogs
Congressmans Human Cloning Ban Would Actually Ban Human Cloning
Congressman Andy Harris (R-MD) has reintroduced a true ban on human cloning to the U.S. Congress. H.R. 2164, Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2012, would ban human cloning all over the U.S. This is actually a remarkable bill. Why? Because most other bans on human cloning do nothing of the sort.I have always told my readers to beware of bans on human cloning. A lot of legislation that claims to ban human cloning does not actually ban human cloning. These laws just redefine cloning so that the cloning of human embryos for research can continue.Somatic cell nuclear transfer or SCNT is the scientific name for cloning. With...
Source: Mary Meets Dolly - May 31, 2013 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Tags: Cloning Source Type: blogs
Cloning Paper Rushed to Publication, Errors Found
The scientific community seems to me to be obsessed with cloning. Even with induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technology making cloning embryos for stem cell harvesting look like taking the long way around, they still are pursuing somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) the scientific name for cloning.The announcement that a team in Oregon had successfully created embryos with SCNT (with eggs "donated" from young cash-stripped co-eds) and had extracted stem cells from these embryos (destroying them in the process) was news all over the world. The findings were published in the journal Cell with unprecedented spee...
Source: Mary Meets Dolly - May 29, 2013 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Tags: Cloning Source Type: blogs
New IVF Embryo Quality Control
In manufacturing, quality control (QC) is very important. A manufacturer always wants to put out the best product and eliminate defective merchandise.The same is true of IVF. With as many as 30 embryos created for every live birth, doctors are always on the look out for ways to separate the robust embryos from the "defective" ones to improve their success rates. Previously this was achieved by preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD.) In PGD, a single cell is removed from the days old embryo and tested for genetic anomalies. The ones that pass the test get a chance at being transferred to their mother's womb. The ...
Source: Mary Meets Dolly - May 22, 2013 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Tags: IVF Source Type: blogs
Value of IVF Embryos "Infinitely Variable?"
I don't think I could have found anything less "scientific" from a website called "ScienceAlert." A group in Australia has taken up the challenge of reforming the laws regarding "left-over" IVF embryos there. Currently, many embryos are destroyed every year because of mandatory storage limits. This group began the "Enhancing Reproductive Opportunity Research Project" to address the concerns of women over the destruction of their embryos mandated by law. It sounds like a good idea. From ScienceAlert:We found that current IVF rules on issues such as storage limits and destruction pract...
Source: Mary Meets Dolly - May 21, 2013 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Tags: IVF Source Type: blogs
Uterus Transplant Baby Lost
This is so incredibly sad for so many reasons. There is really nothing else to say. (I have already expressed my concerns about uterine transplants here.) From the UK's Daily Mail:A woman who was the first to have a successful womb transplant from a dead donor has had her pregnancy terminated after the embryo showed no heartbeat, doctors in Turkey have said.Derya Sert, 22, who was born without a womb, had been receiving in vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment after the transplant in August 2011.Her pregnancy was announced in April.But in a statement released today by Akdeniz University Hospital in Turkey's Mediterranean cit...
Source: Mary Meets Dolly - May 17, 2013 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Tags: Reproductive Technologies Source Type: blogs
Human Embryos Created by Cloning in Oregon
Once induced pluripotent stem cells hit the scene, human cloning slowly faded away. Why clone embryos with human eggs (exploiting women in the process) to get "patient-specific" embryonic stem cells when you can just take an adult cell and reprogram it back to an embryonic-like state? No eggs, no cloning, no creating and destroying embryos.But I knew cloning was just hiding in the shadows waiting to resurface. Scientists are still trying to achieve this "holy grail" of human biology: the creation of human clones. Ones that will generate embryonic stem cells.A team of scientists, including a fertility sp...
Source: Mary Meets Dolly - May 15, 2013 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Tags: Cloning Source Type: blogs
California Bill Would Lift Ban on Paying Women for Eggs
A new bill introduced into the California legislature would lift the ban on paying women for their eggsAB 926, the Reproductive Health and Research Bill, says that to encourage reproductive health and research in the state, women need to be compensated for donating their eggs, a hot commodity in the embryonic stem cell research and infertility arenas....So why would California want more women to go through such a process just for research purposes? AB 926 gives a list of research that would benefit from having more human eggs, which includes reducing the high volume of multiple pregnancies in IVF. But there is some ver...
Source: Mary Meets Dolly - May 14, 2013 Category: Geneticists and Genetics Commentators Tags: Human eggs Source Type: blogs
