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Hearing On Challenge To Okla. Abortion Law Delayed After Change Of Judges
Oklahoma County District Judge Twyla Mason Gray has recused herself from a lawsuit challenging an Oklahoma law that would require women seeking abortions to complete a lengthy questionnaire, the AP/KTUL reports. Before her recusal, Gray issued a temporary restraining order to block the law from taking effect until the suit is resolved. District Judge Daniel Owens will take the place of Gray, who did not provide an explanation for her departure. A hearing scheduled for Friday has been moved to Dec. 18 because of the change.
The questionnaire requires a woman to provide the state with her age, marital status, education level and the nature of the relationship with her partner. It also requires information regarding the number of previous pregnancies; a reason for the abortion; the cost and type of abortion; the method of payment and type of health insurance; and whether an ultrasound was performed. Plaintiffs in the suit argue that the law violates a state constitutional requirement that laws only address a single issue because it relates to four subjects: prohibiting sex-selective abortions, enacting new reporting mandates, redefining various abortion-related terms in state law and creating new roles for multiple state agencies. State attorneys have objected to that argument in court filings.
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Tooth to Bone with Adult Stem Cells
More adult stem cell success to chew on. A new report describes how adult stem cells from dental pulp were used to regrow jaw bone for patients. An Italian research team used stem cells taken from the patients’ own molar dental pulp, mixed with a collagen scaffold, to grow bone in the jaws of patients. For some people, bone in the jaw can shrink away after removal of molars, sometimes leading to loss of other teeth. These patients need a replacement procedure to maintain jaw integrity. Use of the adult stem cells allowed “complete regeneration of bone at the injury site.”
The paper is published in the November issue of the open access journal European Cells and Materials.
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Modern Cannibalism: Company Seeks To Test Human Embryonic Stem Cells for Treating Blindness
WASHINGTON - Advanced Cell Technology, a small Massachusetts-based biotechnology company, said on Thursday it has asked for approval to test human embryonic stem cells in treating a rare cause of blindness. The company said it filed an IND, an investigational new drug application, with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to use the stem cells to treat patients with Stargardt's macular dystrophy. If approved, it would be the second U.S. approval to test human embryonic stem cells in human patients.
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5,000 Teenagers Are Repeat Murderers Every Year
More than 5,000 teenagers had an abortion last year that was at least their second termination. This means that one in 20 of the teenagers who became pregnant ended it with their second or further abortion. It caused further controversy yesterday over the Government's teen pregnancy strategy, which has not only failed to hit its targets but last year also saw numbers of conceptions among teenagers actually increase.
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First 3D MRI Scans of Unborn Babies
A new technique to get the first 3D images of unborn babies from MR (magnetic resonance) scans has been developed by Imperial College Healthcare. A team led by Prof Mary Rutherford, a neonatal neuroradiologist at Hammersmith Hospital, is using the images to find out how foetus' brains develop in the womb. This has been difficult to study before as unborn babies wiggle in the mother's tummy. MR scans require a person to be still as ordered slices are taken continuously through the body.
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Adult Stem Cells Show Vaccine Like Promise in AIDS Fight
Here’s some good adult stem cell news, that has been–as usual–underplayed in the media. Blood stem cells can be engineered to target the HIV virus. From the story:
Their study, published Monday in the-peer reviewed online journal PLoS ONE, provides proof-of-principle — meaning a demonstration of feasibility — that human stem cells can be engineered into the equivalent of a genetic vaccine, according to a UCLA statement. “We have demonstrated in this proof-of-principle study that this type of approach can be used to engineer the human immune system, particularly the T- cell response, to specifically target HIV-infected cells,” said lead investigator Scott G. Kitchen, assistant professor of medicine in the division of hematology and oncology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a member of the UCLA AIDS Institute. “These studies lay the foundation for further therapeutic development that involves restoring damaged or defective immune responses toward a variety of viruses that cause chronic disease, or even different types of tumors.”Researchers from the UCLA AIDS Institute and colleagues say they have shown that human blood stem cells can be engineered into cells that can target and kill HIV-infected cells, which potentially could be used against other chronic viral diseases.
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