No seriously!
Just a few caveats: by "drink" I mean "inject", by "babies" I mean "umbilical cord", and by "your" I mean "rats".
(Oh, cut me some slack. How often does one get the chance to report science news in a death metal context?)
Hard details after the jump.
Continue reading 'Hail Satan! Drink babies' blood to keep your brain young' >
That pope — whats his name? Popey Poperton the Popeteenth? — says the darndest things. Our know-it-all Big Brother just reported on his latest hilarious proclamations. This time, he railed against the evils of stem cells and cloning — well, I'll let him tell you, it's so much funnier when he says it:
Practices like freezing embryos, suppression of embryos in multiple pregnancies, embryonic stem cell research, the prospect of human cloning and artificial insemination outside the body had "shattered the barriers meant to protect human dignity," he said."When human beings in the weakest and most defenseless state of their existence are selected, abandoned, killed or used as pure 'biological material,' how can one deny that they are being treated not as 'someone' but as 'something,"' he said.
Such practices "questioned the very concept of the dignity of man," he said in the speech to the department known as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Man, is he the next Louie Anderson or what? Get this guy a hot wife and a sitcom on CBS!
Continue reading 'Pope declares cloning has 'shattered human dignity;' humans: 'What dignity?'' >
My girlfriend always said I was useless, but this is ridiculous: British scientists at the University of Newcastle have coaxed female embryonic stem cells to develop into primitive sperm cells. They'd previously done it with male bone marrow cells, but this new development opens up the door to lesbian couples having children that share genes from both parents.
That same University of Newcastle team is applying for permission to turn female bone marrow into sperm cells, which one lesbian partner could donate to be turned into stem cells, which would then be used to impregnate the other partner. The next step for Prof. Karim Nayernia and team is to encourage the sperm to undergo meiosis to ensure they have enough genetic material to fertilize an egg. Nayernia first flirted with the possibility of deriving sperm from stem cells when he used sperm taken from male embryonic stem cells to fertilize mice to produce seven offspring, six of which survived to adulthood, though they did suffer from side effects.
“I think, in principle, it will be scientifically possible,” Prof Nayernia told New Scientist.
But Prof. Nayernia's methods aren't without technical and ethical detractors.
Continue reading 'Sperm created from female embryo; men now irrelevant' >
The wife is stoked: researchers at the University of Minnesota have engineered a bioartificial heart. That's right. The era of organ farming is at hand, and for those of us with Gordian masses of writhing vipers instead instead of hearts, this is great news!
By using a process called "whole organ decellularization" scientists have proven beyond all doubt that they should never be allowed to speak in anything but maths and advanced programming languages. But, ridiculous grammar aside, this process is nothing short of astonishing. The anti-stem cell folks should be placated by now, simply because this looks so much like a miracle that Yahweh has to have had a hand in it. Yahweh or Dr. Frank-N-Furter, it isn't clear.
Continue reading 'The Era of Organ Farming Officially at Hand' >
Because we always need more monkeys, the Oregon National Primate Research Centre is happy to oblige. Shoukhrat Mitalipov has apparently succeeded in cloning the first embryos from adult monkeys, but can't talk about it until the results of the study are published later this month.
Continue reading 'Monkeys! Coming soon in exciting therapeutic, cloned form. Probably.' >
