Summary of NPR Article re Egg Donation

Summary of NPR Article

The Kaiser Daily Women's Health Policy Reports summarized an audio story that appeared yesterday on NPR’s “Morning Edition,” as a companion to the two stories on the web site that I mentioned. It’s about the difficulties of obtaining eggs for research. You can go to the NPR site to hear the story, or you can read the Kaiser summary (they’re usually pretty accurate). It’s a bit weird to summarize the summary, so I will only say that it discusses the competition for egg donation between fertility clinics and stem cell researchers; fertility clinics can pay women for their donations, and women who donate to stem cell facilities “will not receive the emotional reward of helping infertile couples conceive.”

It all depends on what emotionally satisfies you, I guess.

Senators Seek Vote

Senators Seek Vote

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid and Senators Ted Kennedy, Tom Harkin, and Dianne Feinstein today called on Senator Bill Frist to bring embryonic stem cell legislation to the floor. A letter signed by 40 Democrats was also released. A press release from Harry Reid’s office has the full text of the letter and quotes some of the signing Senators. Next week is “Health Week” in the Senate; the letter said in part,

The House passed H.R. 810 in May 2005 -- yet the Senate has failed to take action for nearly a year. Further delay will mean more lost opportunities for new cures and new treatments. The Senate should mark the anniversary of the House vote with action, not more inaction. We therefore urge you to bring H.R. 810 to the Senate floor for debate and a vote during "Health Week". Millions of patients and their families across the nation cannot afford to wait any longer for enactment of this urgently needed legislation.

Signing Senators were

Harry Reid, Tom Harkin, Dianne Feinstein, Ted Kennedy, Daniel Akaka, Max Baucus, Evan Bayh, Joe Biden, Jeff Bingaman, Barbara Boxer, Maria Cantwell, Tom Carper, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Mark Dayton, Christopher Dodd, Byron Dorgan, Dick Durbin, Russell Feingold, Daniel Inouye, Jim Jeffords, Tim Johnson, John Kerry, Herb Kohl, Mary Landrieu, Frank Lautenberg, Patrick Leahy, Carl Levin, Joe Lieberman, Blanche Lincoln, Robert Menendez, Barbara Mikulski, Patty Murray, Bill Nelson, Barack Obama, Jack Reed, Ken Salazar, Paul Sarbanes, Charles Schumer, Debbie Stabenow, and Ron Wyden.

Many newspapers are running a Reuters story on the subject; it says little more than the press release does, although it does reveal that the “Health Week” moniker was created by Republicans for consideration of other health-related issues in the Senate next week.

Brief note

There's some interesting political news today--Democrats are scheduling a press conference to push Bill Frist to putting the stem cell bill on the Senate floor for debate. However, I have a pretty significant amount of work for a big project that I need to get done in a hurry today, so I need to attend to that before I start blogging. By then the press conference will probably have happened too. I'll hop on later in the day and let you know.