Check-in

Check-in

No research news today, and not much on any other fronts either—the new, “ethical” method of creating ESCs is still receiving a lot of coverage, although the headlines are no longer so uniformly glowing: the fact that this does not necessarily resolve issues is starting to be discussed. The Washington Post had a story about the journal in which the results were published (Nature) re-issuing its press release after receiving a message from a Catholic bishop. Another story, in the Seattle Times (from multiple sources), described some of the negative reaction from both scientists and conservatives.

Otherwise the other “big” story (Reuters and elsewhere) is one about English soccer players storing stem cells against future injury. There are 5 players known to have done this. They froze stem cells from the cord blood of their newborn infants, hoping that that the stem cells can be used later in repairing cartilage or ligament damage. One hopes they were planning to have the children anyway.