Free Republic

As 12-year-old David Vetter was about to die at Texas Children's Hospital in 1984, he gave a last wink to his doctor, William T. Shearer. His wife told us Dr. Shearer carried that moment through the rest of his life. Dr. Shearer, a professor of pediatrics at Baylor College of Medicine, died this week at the age of 81. David Vetter had been born with severe combined immunodeficiency, a rare disease that could have made it fatal for him to be touched, held, kissed by his parents or even take a breath of fresh air. Doctors devised a sterile clear...

Illustrating that the jihadist enterprise transcends all borders, American Islamist groups typically preoccupied with remaking the U.S. have been leaving their fingerprints on the campaign to exchange secular authoritarianism for religious authoritarianism in the Middle East. As these organizations labor stateside to nudge the governing class to embrace Arab Islamists at the expense of liberals — prompting Egyptian intellectual Essam Abdallah to lament that "the most dramatic oppression of the region's civil societies and the Arab Spring … is led by the powerful Islamist lobbies in Washington" — several of the groups' past and current officials have emerged as key...

Adult stem-cell research may lead one day to cures for terminal and debilitating diseases "I hope we will always be guided by both intellect and heart, by both our capabilities and our conscience." -President George W. Bush1 Few areas of scientific study hold as much potential as adult stem-cell research. This research is already generating medical breakthroughs and treatments for debilitating diseases and disabilities, such as spinal cord injuries, sickle cell anemia and Parkinson's. Indeed, scientists laud stem-cell treatments as the "miracle cure" of the 21st century. Unlike so many areas of biotechnology, adult stem cells do not spark a...

WASHINGTON (AP) _ A single injection of genetically modified stem cells is all it took to cure two children of a complex form of an inherited immune system disorder often referred to as the ``bubble boy disease,'' researchers report. An experimental technique that altered genes in bone marrow stem cells restored the immune systems of the children, researchers from Italy and Israel said in a study appearing in the journal Science. The children were born with what experts said was the most complex form of severe combined immunodeficiency disorder, or SCID. ``Both children have been cured but ... both will...