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Supreme Court rolls back campaign spending limits
The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that corporations may spend as freely as they like to support or oppose candidates for president and Congress, easing decades-old limits on business efforts to influence federal campaigns.
By a 5-4 vote, the court overturned a 20-year-old ruling that said companies can be prohibited from using money from their general treasuries to produce and run their own campaign ads. The decision, which almost certainly will also allow labor unions to participate more freely in campaigns, threatens similar limits imposed by 24 states.
It leaves in place a prohibition on direct contributions to candidates from corporations and unions.
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House lacks votes to OK Senate health bill
Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she lacks the votes to push the Senate's sweeping health overhaul bill through the House, a potentially devastating blow to President Barack Obama's signature issue.
The California Democrat made the comment to reporters Thursday after House Democrats held a closed-door meeting at which participants vented frustration with the massive version of the legislation.
Pelosi said, "In its present form without any changes, I don't think it's possible to pass the Senate bill in the House....I don't see the votes for it at this time." (Watch related video report)
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Obamacare: Rationing Against Prematurely Born Babies
It's funny: The more some Obamacare supporters deny that it would lead to health care rationing, the more it is advocated among the bioethics set and in the Medical Intelligentsia. Now, there is an explicit call to deny very early premature babies life-sustaining treatment because of the cost. From a letter to the editor published originally in the Journal of Medical Ethics:
Rationing and providing only comfort care should be considered not just at the end of life for adults, Freeman maintains, but also in instances of extremely premature births. He cites studies showing that intensive care for infants born at 22-23 weeks resulted in more than 1,700 extra days in intensive care, with less than 20 percent surviving. Of those 20 percent, less than 3 percent survived without profound impairment that required expensive interventions.
That might fly in some places, but not in America.
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Filling Gaps in Bones with Adult Stem Cells
A new study shows that adult stem cells encased in a spongy matrix can be used to fill in large gaps in bones, providing a potential alternative to bone grafts. Georgia Tech researchers tested the method in rats with large bone gaps, to simulate massive injuries. Bone marrow-derived mesenchymal adult stem cells or amniotic fluid stem cells were tested. Eight weeks after the treatment, new bone bridged the gaps in four of nine defects treated with scaffolds seeded with adult stem cells, one of nine defects in the amniotic stem cell group, and none of the defects in rats treated with the scaffold alone.
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Adult Stem Cells Save Legs
A number of different reports have shown that adult stem cells can save limbs that might otherwise have been amputated. The most recent results, published in Bone Marrow Transplantation, reported salvage of legs in seven out of nine patients treated with their own peripheral blood adult stem cells. The paper also gives a nice summary of some of the previous clinical trials in this area.
Critical limb ischemia, the severe loss of oxygen to extremities, is an end-stage of peripheral artery disease (PAD). often results in amputation of the affected limb, and can be life-threatening.
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35,000 Pro Lifers in San Francisco This Saturday
A woman who walked away from her job as a clinic director at Planned Parenthood clinic and a UCLA student who leads a group intent on exposing abuses in the abortion industry will speak at the 6th Annual Walk for Life West Coast Saturday, January 23rd in San Francisco.
More than 35,000 people from colleges, high schools and churches from as far away as Denver and Texas will rally at 11 AM, Saturday, January 23rd, and walk 2 miles across San Francisco, through Fisherman's Wharf ending at Marina Green in sight of the Golden Gate Bridge.
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