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Some 911 calls in Manhattan will now bring out two ambulances, one hurrying to the scene and one lagging slightly behind. The first one will try to save the patient’s life. The second one will try to save the patient’s kidneys, in case the first ambulance fails. After months of grappling with the ethical and legal implications, New York City medical officials are beginning to test a system that they hope will one day greatly increase the number of organs collected for transplant. For five months starting Wednesday, the city will deploy a specially trained team that will monitor 911...

Experts say judge's injunction on using federal funds effectively halts work in labs across the country WEDNESDAY, Aug. 25 (HealthDay News) -- U.S. scientists reacted with dismay to Monday's decision by a U.S. judge to halt any expansion of stem cell research using federal funds. The temporary injunction, which basically blindsided the scientific community, effectively takes embryonic stem cell research back to the pre-2001 days. That was when then-President George W. Bush ordered that federal monies could only be used to fund research involving embryonic stem cell lines created before 2001. Late Tuesday, however, the Obama administration, which had issued...

The Obama administration has approved the bid by cloning company Geron to undertake the first trial involving the use of embryonic stem cells in humans. They have never been used before in people because the cells cause tumors and have been plagued by immune system rejection issues when tried in animals. Scientists and pro-life advocates say human embryonic stem cells are not ready for trial because problems associated with the cells in animals haven't been solved. The Food and Drug Administration had initially placed the trial on hold but Geron indicated today that the agency is now allowing it to...

White House memos from 1997, when Elena Kagan was a top domestic policy advisor to President Clinton, show that Kagan -- nominated to the Supreme Court by President Obama -- recommended that the Clinton administration permit cloning of human embryos for research purposes. Writing just months after Scottish researchers had announced the birth of a cloned sheep, Kagan and another Clinton aide recommended that the president announce a ban on cloning that would lead to the birth of human infants, but emphasized that the policy "would not ban the creation of cloned embryos for research purposes.

Children of God for Life announced today that Neocutis, a bio-pharmaceutical company focused on dermatology and skin care is using aborted fetal cell lines to produce several of their anti-aging skin creams. “It is absolutely deplorable that Neocutis would resort to exploiting the remains of a deliberately slaughtered baby for nothing other than pure vanity and financial gain,” stated Executive Director Debi Vinnedge. “There is simply no moral justification for this.” For years Children of God for Life has been a watchdog on pharmaceutical companies using aborted fetal cell lines in medical products and they have received thousands of inquiries...

42.90 Euros Per Arm The German company Tutogen's business in body parts is as secretive as it is lucrative. It extracts bones from corpses in Ukraine to manufacture medical products, as part of a global market worth billions that is centered in the United States. Anatoly Korzhak, a pensioner and former engineer, died in Kiev on August 5, 2004. His body was picked up at 2 a.m. and taken to the forensic medicine institute in the Ukrainian capital. That same night, Korzhak's daughter, Lena Krat, received a telephone call and was asked to come to the institute as soon as...

Albany, N.Y., Jun 14, 2009 / 05:48 pm (CNA).- New York’s Empire State Stem Cell Board (ESSCB) decided on Thursday to commit funds to pay women to have their eggs harvested for embryo research. A member of the panel’s ethics board charged that the move was a “gross exploitation” of poor women and did not take into account the procedure’s health risks. There was reportedly no period of public comment for the board’s decision. Fr. Thomas Berg, a member of the ESSCB’s Ethics Committee and Executive Director of the Westchester Institute, criticized the board.“Without any involvement from the public,...

Some research advocates and scientists are upset that techniques they support would get no federal money. Many scientists hoped President Obama would end what they saw as the politicization of embryonic stem cell research. They thought all Bush administration funding bans would vanish, easing the way for unimpeded research that could yield interventions for physicians to use in treating everything from Parkinson's disease to diabetes. But those hopes may be running into political reality.The National Institutes of Health in April proposed overturning some Bush-era restrictions on federal funding for stem cell research while leaving others in place. The rules would...

A United States-based fertility doctor claimed to have cloned 14 human embryos and transferred 11 of them into the wombs of four women. In an interview published on Wednesday, Panayiotis Zavos told Britain’s Independent newspaper that although none of the women had had a viable pregnancy as a result, the first cloned baby could now be born within a couple of years. “There is absolutely no doubt about it... the cloned child is coming. There is absolutely no way that it will not happen,” he said, quoted by the paper. “If we intensify our efforts, we can have a cloned...

We thought we'd heard some wild diet tips floating around health-obsessed Hollywood. But this takes the cake. According to MomLogic.com, a woman
 named Chrissy Schilling had her first baby over the weekend. And she and her sister celebrated by cooking and serving up the placenta. They put it on pasta and into a panini sandwich and posted some photos of the meals on a Facebook page

. According to Chrissy's sister Kathy Schilling's recommendations and recipe,
 the placenta -- full of lingering blood, vitamins, hormones -- is nourishing for the baby during pregnancy, but the nutrients are also good for moms...

Last week, the White House invited me to a signing ceremony overturning the Bush (43) executive order on stem cell research. I assume this was because I have long argued in these columns and during my five years on the President's Council on Bioethics that, contrary to the Bush policy, federal funding should be extended to research on embryonic stem cell lines derived from discarded embryos in fertility clinics. I declined to attend. Once you show your face at these things you become a tacit endorser of whatever they spring. My caution was vindicated. President Bush had restricted federal funding...

Wednesday March 11, 2009 Bishop: "President Obama is forcing all American taxpayers to pay for this homicidal research" By John-Henry WestenPHOENIX, March 11, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Bishop of Phoenix in Arizona has written a straight-talking column responding to President Barack Obama's executive order providing federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.  "This means that American taxpayers will now be paying for the killing of human beings at a very early stage in their lives (as embryos), so that scientific research can make use of them for experiments that may or may not yield positive results," writes Bishop Thomas...

Obama to Sign Executive Order Monday Opening Public Funding of Embryonic Stem Cell Research http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/mar/09030611.html By John-Henry Westen WASHINGTON, March 6, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - President Barack Obama plans to rescind the Bush policy limiting federal funding for embryo destructive research on Monday. The Bush policy had allowed federal funding for experiments on already existing lines of embryos, but forbade the funds from being used to create new embryos for experimentation. According to news reports, a signing ceremony will take place on Monday at 11 am. Details about the Executive Order are not available, but according to the Washington Post, "proponents...

LONDON: The ethical aspect notwithstanding, an Italian doctor has claimed to have cloned three human babies who are "healthy" and now living in eastern Europe. "I helped give birth to three children with the human cloning technique. It involved two boys and a girl who are nine years old today. They were born healthy and they are in excellent health now," the Daily Telegraph quoted Severino Antinori as telling the 'Oggi' weekly. "The women's eggs were impregnated in a laboratory through a method called 'nuclear transfer'," he said, adding that the method used was "an improvement" over the technique used...

One of the pillars of German industry, the giant but debt-crippled Schaeffler car parts supplier, was accused yesterday of using hair shorn from at least 40,000 Auschwitz death camp prisoners to make textiles at its factories in Nazi-occupied Poland during the Second World War. The highly disturbing allegations were contained in new evidence unearthed by Polish historians at the Auschwitz museum, who said they had found rolls of fabric made from camp inmates' hair at a former Schaeffler factory in Poland's southern region of Silesia. The discovery was the latest in a series of damaging blows for the ailing Schaeffler...

Federal regulators have green-lighted the first trial of an embryonic stem-cell treatment in humans. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave the go-ahead for Geron Corporation to start a phase I safety trial of its therapy GRNOPC1 for spinal cord injuries, the Menlo Park, Calif.–based company announced today. It first sought permission for the trial four years ago and spent much of the last year trying to satisfy the FDA’s concerns about it. "This marks the beginning of what is potentially a new chapter in medical therapeutics—one that reaches beyond pills to a new level of healing: the restoration...

A NEW type of traveller dubbed the stem cell tourist is worrying Australian scientists and doctors who say the vulnerable ill are being duped. Australians with debilitating and sometimes terminal diseases are spending tens of thousands of dollars for unproved stem cell treatments in Third World countries. Many, such as Townsville paraplegic Asti Poole, are coming home out of pocket, and extremely let down, after seeing little or no improvement in their conditions. Ms Poole, 28, went to an infertility specialist's clinic in India last year for two months of embryonic stem cell treatment. Four other Australians were also at...

How would you feel if your DNA were used without your permission to produce cloned human embryos for medical research? Regardless of whether it is right or wrong to experiment on human embryos, creating them would require either giving women high doses of drugs with unknown side effects to produce the large numbers of eggs needed for cloning research, or the placing of your genes inside cows' or pigs' eggs to produce human-animal hybrid embryos.So you might well expect to be asked to give your explicit permission before such a morally fraught procedure is carried out using your tissue, but...

Think being the next president would be a brutal job? Imagine being a transplant surgeon. You can't tell the parents of a dying kid when to pull the plug, but you have to be there, ready, the minute he expires. You have to wait until he's dead, but not so long that his organs become useless. You can give him drugs to keep his organs healthy, but you mustn't technically revive him. And you can't remove and restart his heart until it's been declared kaput. Pick up a recent issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, and you'll see...

The Australian government has issued its first license allowing scientists to create cloned human embryos to try and obtain embryonic stem cells. The in vitro-fertilization firm Sydney IVF was granted the license and reportedly has access to 7,200 human eggs for its research. If the firm is successful it would be a world first, the Australian government's National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), which granted the license, said on Wednesday. Scientists in other countries have made stem cells they believe are similar to embryonic cells using a variety of techniques, but none have been able to extract embryonic stem...