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WASHINGTON - President Obama will send a $3.8 trillion budget to Congress tomorrow for the coming fiscal year that would increase financing for education and for civilian research programs by more than 6 percent and provide $25 billion for cash-starved states, even as he seeks to freeze much domestic spending for the rest of his term. The budget for fiscal 2011, which begins in October, will identify the winners and losers behind Obama’s proposal for a three-year freeze of a portion of the budget. Many programs at the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the Energy Department...

Bioethics: Five years after a budget-busting $3 billion was allocated to embryonic stem cell research, there have been no cures, no therapies and little progress. So supporters are embracing research they once opposed. California's Proposition 71 was intended to create a $3 billion West Coast counterpart to the National Institutes of Health, empowered to go where the NIH could not — either because of federal policy or funding restraints on biomedical research centered on human embryonic stem cells. Supporters of the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative, passed in 2004, held out hopes of imminent medical miracles that were...

Results from 34 swine flu victims in New York were released by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in a December 7 bulletin. The swine flu symptoms and effects on the lungs of the victims were similar to the effects of the 1918 Spanish flu, which had an extremely high mortality rate around the world. Other reports of H1N1 infections deep in the lungs have been reported around the world, including Ukraine, China, Brazil, Norway, and the United States, in Iowa and Utah. These infections have been linked to a change in the receptor binding domain of the virus. Swine...

The Obama administration on Wednesday approved the first human embryonic stem cells for experiments by federally funded scientists under a new policy designed to dramatically expand government support for one of the most promising but also most contentious fields of biomedical research. The National Institutes of Health authorized 11 lines of cells produced by scientists at the Children's Hospital in Boston and two lines created by researchers at the Rockefeller University in New York. All were obtained from embryos left over by couples seeking treatment for infertility.

ATLANTA – Federal health officials now say that 4,000 or more Americans likely have died from swine flu — about four times the estimate they've been using.

(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...

Does HIV mean certain death? In the quarter century since the world was introduced to the idea that a new sexually transmitted virus was the cause of Aids, HIV has been generally regarded as one of the biggest killers of our time. HIV/Aids has not been the mass disease in Britain that people were led to believe in the 1980s, but the death toll from immune deficiency diseases ascribed to HIV in Africa has been staggering. The scale of death there is an ongoing tragedy that tests the moral resolve of the rich world. How much do we care? Enough...

·11250 Waples Mill Road ·   Fairfax, Virginia 22030    ·800-392-8683   The "Junkiest" Junk Science That Taxpayers' Money Can Buy   Friday, October 09, 2009   Now, more than at any other time in anyone's memory, the federal government is in no position to waste taxpayer dollars on gun control advocacy "research."  Nevertheless, the National Institutes of Health recently gave anti-gun researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine $639,586 to conduct a survey intended to prove that possessing a gun doesn't benefit assault victims. Criminologist Gary Kleck calls the resulting survey "the very epitome of junk science in the guns-and-violence field—poor...

Gun Rights: A decade after Congress forbade the CDC from studying the health consequences of gun ownership, the National Institutes of Health has started funding such research. Will reform pry the guns from our cold, sick hands? More than a decade ago Congress, seeing it as a backdoor assault on the 2nd Amendment and the right to keep and bear arms, voted to cut funding for firearms research by the Centers for Disease Control. Such research was viewed as one-sided and based on flawed assumptions that all gun use was bad, even that which saved lives and deterred crime. The...

The Human Methylome: What Do These Patterns Mean? by Brian Thomas, M.S.* For decades, researchers have noticed that tiny chemicals called “methyl groups� piggyback on DNA molecules, and that they occur in certain patterns. Intrigued by the meaning and function of methylation patterns, especially as they relate to medicine, a five-year, $ 190-million-dollar research effort funded by the National Institutes of Health began in 2008. In one of its studies, researchers have stumbled upon a new intricacy of cell function.Joseph Ecker of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies led a collaboration to generate the world’s first complete map of human...

Can the scientist who denied the cause of AIDS be trusted to cure cancer? --snip-- ...In the past three decades, Duesberg has been described as a genius, a martyr, and a genocidal lunatic—often by the same person, usually amid the fierce debates and international headlines that come with major scientific breakthroughs. In 1971, at the age of 33, he became the first scientist to identify a cancer-causing gene—a biological holy grail that secured his place among an elite group of the country's top researchers. Tenure at Berkeley and a coveted spot in the National Academy of Sciences followed. So did...

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...

WASHINGTON, D.C. (BNO NEWS) – President Obama will visit the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Maryland on Wednesday morning to make a major announcement regarding the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the White House said on Monday. President Obama will be joined by Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius and NIH Director Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D. Obama will also tour a laboratory at the Bethesda facility. Further details were not immediately released.

how dragon boating can help cancer survivors; how canoes can help cultural identity; how snorting cocaine creates anxiety. Click here for photos. In a letter to NIH director Francis Collins, Rep. Greg Walden (R-OR), the ranking member of the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, and Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) on Thursday demanded to know the screening procedures and review criteria used to approve $1.6 billion in stimulus grants and another $20 million in grants Click here to see video. FOX News identified more than a dozen suspect studies, many of which were funded by stimulus dollars, and compared them...

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...

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...

President Obama's nomination of Dr. Francis S. Collins to head the National Institutes of Health is an excellent choice, but it troubles some secularists who believe science should proceed unrestrained by any higher principles than what can be achieved in a laboratory. The recent New York Times story announcing the president's selection of Dr. Collins ("who led the government's successful effort to sequence the human genome") reflects what would be considered bigotry or sexism if applied to someone because of his or her race or gender. Reporter Gardiner Harris writes that one of the objections to Dr. Collins (he names...

President Obama — in an inspired move — named Dr. Francis Collins head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Dr. Collins is one of the world’s leading scientists. He is a physician-geneticist known in part for his landmark discoveries of disease genes and for his leadership of the Human Genome Project. (Collins served as director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the NIH from 1993-2008.) The New York Times reports, however, that a couple of objections have been raised to the choice of Dr. Collins. According to the Times: The first is his very public embrace of...

A rule that prevents many HIV-positive immigrants and travelers from entering the United States will likely be lifted before the year is up, after the Department of Health and Human Services earlier this month recommended changing the regulation. Immigration and HIV/AIDS advocacy groups have been working to repeal the 22-year-old rule, which they call discriminatory, dangerous, and debilitating to the strength of the U.S. scientific community. A large number of foreigners with the human immunodeficiency virus would benefit from the change, the groups say, when these individuals would finally be able to enter the country to see loved ones, attend...

NOTE: Article is a cut-and-paste "interview-type" presentation. Here are excerpts: BOB ABERNETHY: Several recent best-selling books have sharpened the old debate between some scientists and some religionists over creation, evolution and, among other issues, stem cell research. We want to re-run today a story we carried this past summer about a man who is both a research scientist and an evangelical Christian, and sees no conflict between the two fields. He is Dr. Francis Collins, who led the massive effort to discover the human genetic code. His book is called "The Language of God." ... Dr. COLLINS (at Press Conference):...

President Obama's appointment of Francis Collins to run the National Institutes of Health is significant as a culture war statement. A devout Christian, Collins is one of the foremost advocates for the notion that science and faith are compatible. The former head of the Human Genome Project, Collins is also the author of The Language of God. He's a strong believer but he doesn't let that weaken his scientific rigor (for instance, he's been critical of Creationism and Intelligent Design). Continued

Guidelines for federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research offer incentives for experiments that end human life and have not successfully treated disease. The Obama administration's final guidelines for federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research do more than remove a small protection for living human embryos. They actually encourage scientists to destroy preborn human life, courtesy of $10 billion in federal stimulus money designated for biomedical research, including embryonic stem-cell trials. "The regulations virtually guarantee that many more living human embryos will be destroyed for research," said Carrie Gordon Earll, senior bioethics analyst for Focus on the Family. "This policy also...

(CNSNews.com) -- The National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAA), a part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), will pay $2.6 million in U.S. tax dollars to train Chinese prostitutes to drink responsibly on the job. Dr. Xiaoming Li, the researcher conducting the program, is director of the Prevention Research Center at Wayne State University School of Medicine in Detroit. The grant, made last November, refers to prostitutes as "female sex workers"--or FSW--and their handlers as "gatekeepers." "Previous studies in Asia and Africa and our own data from FSWs [female sex workers] in China suggest that the social...

div class="noticia_imagen_contenedor" style="width: 290px;"> Washington D.C., May 8, 2009 / 01:46 am (CNA).- The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) on Wednesday launched a campaign to oppose embryonic stem cell research and support ethical cures, encouraging citizens to contact Congress and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).After President Barack Obama’s March 9 executive order permitted federal funding for further embryonic stem cell research, the NIH proposed guidelines to fund research that will require stem cells harvested from the destruction of living human embryos.The draft guidelines are open for public comment through May 26.The USCCB campaign, titled "Oppose Destructive Stem Cell...

Besides being another great example of our Federal Government playing fast an loose with our tax dollars, this report even to ridiculous for fiction. The National Institute of Health (NIH) is in the process of spending $400,000 dollars to study if there is a link between drinking alcohol and having sex amongst homosexuals in Argentina. Yes, THAT NIH part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services--the primary Federal agency for conducting and supporting medical research. Obviously none of these jokers went to college--of course there is a link between alcohol and having sex---gay, strait, Argentina, New Jersey, it...

WASHINGTON — For years, Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania has been the National Institutes of Health’s most ardent champion on Capitol Hill. Having survived two bouts with cancer, open-heart surgery and even a faulty diagnosis of Lou Gehrig’s disease, he has long insisted that research that results in medical cures is the best service that government can provide. Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania arrived Friday at the Capitol to cast a crucial vote on the economic stimulus bill. But even lobbyists are stunned by the coup Mr. Specter pulled off this week. In return for providing one of only three...

Scientists across America are celebrating the passing of the Bush administration as the end of a dark age, a bleak stretch in which research budgets shrank and everything — stem cells, sex education, climate change, and the very origins of the Grand Canyon — became a point of conflict. President Barack Obama has ignited a new optimism among the white coats. In his inaugural speech, he promised to "restore science to its rightful place," hinting at nothing short of a renaissance in the fields of health, energy, the environment and America's schools. As a testament to that, the United States...

Scientists for years have intentionally removed potentially explosive words and phrases from research grant applications in an attempt to disguise their work and prevent opposition from critics, according to a Rutgers University study. This type of self-censorship may be having a "chilling" effect on research, the study found, even leading some scientists to abandon their work and pursue other careers. "One researcher told me, 'You will never see me publish another paper about sexual behavior,'" said Joanna Kempner, an assistant professor of sociology at Rutgers, whose study was based on responses from 82 academic researchers nationwide. The study is published...

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has suspended a $9 million grant for a depression study led by a psychiatrist at Emory University in Atlanta. The punishment, imposed in August but only made public today, is apparently the most severe reaction by NIH so far to a Senate investigation of NIH-funded researchers who may have failed to report all of their income from drug companies. Since last spring, Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) has accused at least nine academic psychiatrists of failing to follow federal rules that require NIH grantees to report industry consulting income to their institutions. One investigator at...

The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) handed out the first payments in a multi-million-dollar project to explore epigenomics last month. But some researchers are voicing concerns about the scientific and economic justification for this latest 'big biology' venture. Epigenetics, described as "inheritance, but not as we know it"1, is now a blisteringly hot field. It is concerned with changes in gene expression that are typically inherited, but not caused by changes in gene sequence. In theory, epigenetic studies can help explain how the millions of cells in the human body can carry identical DNA but form completely different cell...

They're the cold cases of medicine, patients with diseases so rare and mysterious that they've eluded diagnosis for years. The National Institutes of Health is seeking those patients - and ones who qualify could get some free care at the government's top research hospital as scientists study why they're sick. "These patients are to a certain extent abandoned by the medical profession because a brick wall has been hit," said Dr. William Gahl, who helped develop the NIH's new Undiagnosed Diseases Program. "We're trying to remove some of that." The pilot program, announced Monday, can only recruit about 100 patients...

President seeks competitive edge with final budget request. In his final year as president, George W. Bush has put forward a budget wish-list that looks to restore his priorities in science and research, with solid increases for some physical sciences and pretty much no new money for the biomedical sector. Whether Congress will go along with this remains to be seen. In terms of research and development, the budgetÂ’s most pronounced feature is a 15% (US$1.6 billion) increase in physical-sciences spending year on year (see Table 1). In December 2007, last-minute negotiations in Congress derailed the second year of BushÂ’s...

disease most Americans have never heard of could soon become more prevalent if dengue, a flu-like illness that can turn deadly, continues to expand into temperate climates and increase in severity, according to a new commentary by Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, and David M. Morens, M.D., Fauci’s senior scientific advisor. Their commentary appears in the January 9 and 16 double issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Flush with success in creating an atom bomb, the U.S. federal government decided it should start funding nonmilitary scientific research. A government report titled "Science, the Endless Frontier" provides the justification for doing this. It makes the case that "science is the responsibility of government because new scientific knowledge vitally affects our health, our jobs, and our national security" (Bush, 1945). Accordingly, the government established a Research Grants Office in January, 1946 to award grants for research in the biomedical and physical sciences. It received 800 grant applications that year. The Research Grants Office is now known as the Center...

Cause for celebration? UCSF's Keith Yamamoto is leading a committee to reimagine peer review at NIH.Credit: UCSF BETHESDA, MARYLAND--Scientists conducting a sweeping examination of the peer-review system at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are considering some radical ideas to revamp the process, they revealed today. At a meeting here of the advisory committee to NIH Director Elias Zerhouni, members debated everything from doing away with the current scoring system on grant proposals to incentives that might improve the quality and motivation of reviewers. Although peer review is still considered a cornerstone of science, it is experiencing new pressures. The...

The National Institutes of Health has spent millions of dollars over the past decade funding the mass production of a creature that is part mouse and part human.  Every one of these most peculiar rodents requires live tissue extracted from the liver and thymus of a human child–and every child who donates tissue to create such mice is first killed by a medical doctor. They are victims of abortions that cannot take place until at least the eighth week of pregnancy, when the fetal liver is finally formed.  Although history may someday record the saga of this mouse as...

American scientists are using tissue from aborted babies in genetically engineered mice to study how certain diseases are spread, and the experiments are being paid for with U.S. tax dollars.  It's not clear how much fetal tissue is used or how it is supplied. Scientists involved in some of the research at the National Institutes of Health refused to speak with Cybercast News Service about their work. The experiments started 20 years ago, when scientists first began implanting or injecting a mouse without an immune system with human cells or tissue to study diseases, such as HIV/AIDS and certain cancers....

A study funded by the US government has concluded that conservatism can be explained psychologically as a set of neuroses rooted in "fear and aggression, dogmatism and the intolerance of ambiguity". As if that was not enough to get Republican blood boiling, the report's four authors linked Hitler, Mussolini, Ronald Reagan and the rightwing talkshow host, Rush Limbaugh, arguing they all suffered from the same affliction. All of them "preached a return to an idealised past and condoned inequality". Republicans are demanding to know why the psychologists behind the report, Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition, received $1.2m in public...

Hillary Clinton: President Bush Has Launched 'War on Science' Monday , August 27, 2007 CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — Sen. Hillary Clinton said Monday that President Bush's approach to health care, including in his spending and research priorities, has resulted in a "war that has been waged by this administration against science." "It's not only in their budget priorities. I mean, think about it: The two priorities of this president have been the war in Iraq and tax cuts for the wealthy, neither of which he's paid for, while he has cut the budgets for the National Institutes of Health and...

Federal investigators are reviewing the activities of 103 scientists who may have had improper links to pharmaceutical companies while they were employed at the National Institutes of Health, apparently resurrecting a conflict-of-interest inquiry that many in the agency thought was closed. In a letter sent to several members of Congress on March 23 and made public yesterday, Daniel R. Levinson, inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services, said his office is looking into the cases "to determine whether investigation is warranted." Levinson also wrote that his office is reviewing whether NIH is adequately monitoring potential conflicts of...

Aldagen, a company focused on stem cell research, and the Texas Heart Institute are teaming up for a clinical trial in which humans will be tested for a potential treatment of limb ailments brought on by blood vessel problems. The treatment is based on the use of purified adult stem cells drawn from bone marrow. The Food and Drug Administration approved the launch of the Phase II trial earlier this year. The stem cells are prepared for use by Aldagen’s proprietary technology known as Aldesort. The National Institutes of Health has said stem cells have the "remarkable potential" to develop...

There's no shortage of private funding for research The National Institutes of Health spent $24.3 million dollars on human embryonic stem-cell research last year. Critics of President Bush's policy of limiting federal funding to only those stem-cell lines derived before August 2001 worry that this amount—relative to NIH's annual $30 billion budget—is not enough. Persuaded of the importance of this research, the U.S. House of Representatives voted in May to lift President Bush's funding restrictions. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist announced this summer that he supported that legislation. The Senate is poised to vote on the issue later this fall....

SCOTCH PLAINS, N.J.-- Dr. James H. Kelly, Chief Executive Officer of Stem Cell Innovations, Inc. (OTCBB: SCLL), will present data today at the Keystone Symposium on Stem Cells in Vancouver demonstrating that the Company has produced multiple lines of human pluripotent stem cells. Because these cells are derived from fetal tissue, not early embryos, they are eligible for use in laboratories funded by the National Institutes of Health.  Stem cells are cells that can produce additional stem cells as well as one or more other types of cells. Pluripotent stem cells can develop into most, if not all, of the...

BURLINGTON, Vt. --A former University of Vermont College of Medicine professor was ordered Wednesday to serve a year and a day in federal prison for using false data to obtain federal research grants. Eric Poehlman, 50, who left UVM in 2001 for the University of Montreal and was fired from there amid revelations about his scientific misconduct, will serve the sentence at a federal prison work camp in Maryland. An official with the National Institutes of Health said Poehlman's case marked the first time a researcher would serve time in prison for falsifying data to obtain federal grants. (snap) Poehlman,...

AP MEDICAL WRITER WASHINGTON -- Over half of U.S. adults use multivitamins, mostly the pretty healthy people who also eat nutrient-fortified foods. Yet there's little evidence that most of the pills do any good - and concern that some people may even get a risky vitamin overload, advisers to the government said Wednesday. Worried about bottles that promise 53 times the recommended daily consumption of certain nutrients, specialists convened by the National Institutes of Health called Wednesday for strengthened federal oversight of the $23 billion dietary supplement industry - especially efforts to pin down side effects. For the average healthy...

Researchers have made progress in understanding how a variant gene linked to schizophrenia may exert its influence in the brain. The findings are tentative but, if confirmed, could yield deep insights into the biological basis of the disease. The gene, called neuregulin-1, was first implicated in schizophrenia in 2002 by DeCode Genetics, a Reykjavik company that looks for the genetic roots of common diseases... But how the variant form of the gene contributed to the disease was far from clear, in part because even the normal gene's function is far from understood. A team led by Amanda J. Law of...

WASHINGTON, April 9 — The use of shock waves to pulverize kidney stones into sand-like material significantly increases the risk for diabetes and high blood pressure later in life, according to the longest follow-up study of the popular therapy. In the study, which is to be published on Monday from the Mayo Clinic, patients who underwent the pulverizing procedure, known as lithotripsy, developed diabetes at almost four times the rate of those whose kidney stones were treated by other methods. The lithotripsy group also developed high blood pressure about 50 percent more often than a group treated by other methods,...

A new study of university scientists who received federal financing from the National Cancer Institute found that they generated patents at a rapid pace and started companies in surprisingly high numbers. The study, the authors say, suggests that the commercial payoff for the government's support for basic research and development in the life sciences is greater than previously thought. The paper, to be published today, comes at a time when politicians and policy makers in the United States and Europe are questioning the value of government funds invested in fundamental research. In theory, those investments should be a wise use...

Meeting stirs debate over rocketing rate of C-sections. An expert panel convened to advise healthy women about the risks of caesarean sections concluded that they cannot do so, because there is so little hard evidence. But at least some specialists feel that the procedure should be discouraged. Nearly 30% of babies born in the United States today arrive by caesarean section, compared to some 20% a decade ago, and many other countries are seeing similar rises. The common perception is that more and more women are demanding elective C-sections to fit their busy schedules and bypass the pain of labour....

AP MEDICAL WRITER WASHINGTON -- Nearly three in 10 U.S. mothers are giving birth by Caesarean section - a record number - and more and more of them seem to be choosing a surgical birth even when there's no clear medical need. No one knows exactly how many C-sections are purely elective. It's an intense controversy: Some estimates suggest there could be tens of thousands annually, and critics say many of those women were pressured into surgery or didn't know the risks. Amid the uncertainty, the National Institutes of Health opened a three-day meeting Monday to determine just how much...