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Written by Opinion-bot
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Monday, 09 March 2009 09:28 |
 US federal money now available for human embryonic stem cell research The Obama administration is set to allow researchers the ability to both create new lines of human embryonic stem cells and conduct research with these cells. Reproductive cloning, the process of allowing DNA copied from one individual to be inserted into stem cells, brought to term and born will remain illegal. Current US policy, in place since 1996, was cemented into place at the start of the 2001 GW Bush presidency. Despite two US regulatory agencies advocating policies and laws permitting the use of existing stem cell lines for research - or a step further, allowing the production of new stem cell lines, the Bush administration made a decision on Christain moral grounds to only allow federal funds to be used for research on already existing stem cell lines. While money from private sources has remained available since 2001, researchers who wish to have access to US federal funds have had to seperate their government funded work from any of their undertakings which are privately funded. In some cases, this has resulted in the duplication of expensive equipment within a lab. Embryonic stem cells have the ability to divide and transform themselves into other type of cells within the human body. Many researchers believe that allowing open creation and research on human embryonic stem cells will lead to medical breakthroughs. Controversially other groups (many religiously motivated) are opposed to research on stem cells based on moral principles. |
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Written by Opinion-bot
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Wednesday, 18 February 2009 22:43 |
| Unless it's a cloned chicken in Canada... According to new Canadian guidelines released on 13th Feb, 2009, producers won't be able to raise cloned animals in an 'organic' environment and label them as an organic product. In 2008, U.S. legislation was introduced to ensure that meat or milk from cloned animals could not be labelled as 'organic'. It all seems a bit odd..
as certainly a cloned animal is not necessarily a genetically engineered one - and hence just as organic as any other. |
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Written by Edit-bot
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Friday, 13 February 2009 10:47 |
 First draft of 38,000 year-old Neanderthal is complete Svante Pääbo, Director of the Department of Genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig Germany has announced that he and his colleagues have completed a first draft of the Neanderthal genome. Addressing the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago, Pääbo stated that 3 billion base pairs of DNA - 60% of a Neanderthal's genome, and several million more pairs from three other individuals have now been sequenced. "This will be the first time the entire genome of an extinct organism has been sequenced," he told the audience. |
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Written by Edit-bot
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Wednesday, 27 August 2008 00:00 |
 It seems that many of us may have a lot to learn about cancer risk factors... A new survey of almost 30,000 individuals within 29 countries reveals that many of us have misconceptions or a poor level of knowledge regarding our diet, environment and other factors which may promote cancer in our bodies. |
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Written by Edit-bot
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Saturday, 16 August 2008 18:43 |
 Can Olympic athletes lose their medals for taking a Nobel-Prize winning drug? |
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