Don't you love it?  Grow your own transplant parts from your own stem cells. Claudia Castillo gets windpipe tailor-made from her own stem cells: (My emphasis)

A woman has been given a new section of windpipe created from her own stem cells in an operation that could revolutionise surgery.

Claudia Castillo, 30, who lives in Barcelona, has become the first person to be given a whole organ tailor-made for her in laboratories across Europe.

A graft from a donor was used, but because it has been imbued with Ms Castillo’s own cells, there is no sign that her body will reject the organ.

Researchers and surgeons from Britain, Italy and Spain collaborated to grow tissue from Ms Castillo’s own bone marrow stem cells, using them to fashion the new bronchus – a branch of the windpipe. They believe that one day the approach will be used to create engineered replacements for other damaged organs, such as the bowel or bladder. In five years they hope to begin clinical trials in which laboratory-made voice boxes are implanted into patients with cancer of the larynx.

Please notice that this breakthrough did not come from embryonic stem cells, the stem cell research that the Democrats are so gung ho on. This comment rather says it all from the Times: 

We continue to have vast success with adult stem cells, but the Obamamaniacs still want to use live embryos, (which have not had one cure in over 25 years), to satisfy the pro-abortion crowd.  ...John Frank, Reading, USA

Stem cell research was a big issue during the presidential campaign. Obama ads lied about McCain and Palin's stance on stem cell research. Truth is, the adult stem cell research that Republicans support is already yielding about 73 benefits to human patients. You can read more about it at CNS, and on the Stemcellresearch.org site.

Embryonic stem cell research, touted by Democrats, has hit snags in that when embryonic stem cells were introduced to rats, tumor growth resulted. From CNS:

Stem cells obtained from human embryos, however, have not been successful in yielding results in scientific research thus far.

Why should we support that embryonic type stem cell research when adult stem cells are already being used successfully  on humans? That does not make cents or sense!

Please, comment content should relate to the subject of the post. Although I try to respond to many, do not interpret my lack of a response as agreement.

 

Links: 

 

Brookfield7, Fairly Conservative, Vicki Mckenna, Jay Weber, The Right View Wisconsin, Mark Levin, CNS News

For years I was a vegetarian. I ate a lot of soy and soy based veggie-meat substitutes. I did it for health reasons. Boy, was I wrong!

A few years ago I started seeing a D.O. (Osteopathic Doctor) because I felt so exhausted. After a number of tests it was determined I had an under active thyroid and an allergy to soy. She added that most people were allergic to soy because it is in so many processed foods.

Today I received an email health alert from Dr. Mercola. (My holistic dentist recommended his website and so I signed up for his health alerts.) Today's alert was all about Dr. Daniel, the author of The Whole Soy Story: The Dark Side of America’s Favorite Health Food, and the dangers of soy.

Why is soy so heavily promoted as a health food? Because it is BIG business. Like so many things in our society, if you "follow the money" you find soy has little to do with health and everything to do with increasing sales.

“One of the most effective things they [the soy industry] did was, some years ago, they recognized that they had a whole lot of soy that they wanted to sell, but they didn’t have a market for it because most people perceived soy products as something that was a communist food or fascist food. Or soy was perceived as a hippie food …

So either way soy did not have a good image and they got to thinking, “Well how can we make soy into an upscale food that people will want to buy and want to pay well for?” And what they did was absolutely brilliant. They came up with the idea of turning it into a health food. And that way rich people and upscale people would start to popularize it and the image would improve and then middle class and lower class people would want to eat it as well.

A soy heavy diet is detrimental enough for adults, causing among other things thyroid disorders, but it has even more drastic effects on children.  Soy based infant formula is especially harmful to the long term health of children.

Soy is bad enough for adults, but children and babies who are still developing are particularly vulnerable to soy’s hormone-mimicking effects. This means avoiding soy infant formula like the plague, and also not eating soy products if you are pregnant, is a health necessity.

Not only does soy infant formula have profoundly adverse hormonal effects, but it also has over 1,000 percent more aluminum than conventional milk-based formulas. Many soy foods also have toxic levels of manganese. Soy formula has up to 80 times higher manganese than is found in human breast milk.

In terms of the hormonal dangers, a Lancet study showed that the daily exposure to estrogen-imitating chemicals for infants who consume soy formulas was 6-11 times higher than adults consuming soy foods.

And the blood concentration of these hormones was 13,000 to 22,000 times higher than estrogen in the blood. An infant exclusively fed soy formula receives the estrogenic equivalent (based on body weight) of up to five birth control pills per day.

But don't take my word for it, look into this issue for yourself. Before you reach for that "Silk" soy milk, soy based energy bar, or worse yet, soy based infant formula, read and watch the YouTube in this link as well as Dr. Mercola's comments at the end.

 

Note: My holistic dentist informed me that the only soy products people should eat are tempeh and miso, both a fermented form of soy. The fermentation process removes the harmful affects of soy.

Links: 

Brookfield7, Fairly Conservative, Betterbrookfield, Mark Levin,  Vicki Mckenna

That may seem obvious to you. To some animal rights activists it is not.

Two weeks ago, two ads in Brookfield Now presented both sides of the argument: for and against animal testing at the Medical College of Wisconsin. This week I saw only a pro letter.

A column by Eugene Kane caught my eye. In it he presented some interesting quotes and interviews. On the pro side, the medical college statement reads, "As a medical school, it is essential that we remain true to our mission, which is to improve human life by educating the next generation of physicians..." On the con side, "According to Angela Speed, public relations specialist for the humane society, the shelter feels there's no compelling reason for the college to use dogs when top medical colleges like Harvard, Yale and Johns Hopkins don't. She said those universities use pigs instead."

So why not just use pigs, sheep, or goats? Because they are hoofed animals and not anatomically like the human. I can still remember back to my college days of physiology and anatomy class. We dissected cats. Why cats we asked? Because they were anatomically and physiologically similar to humans: The bones, muscles, and organs of felines and canines are arranged and function much like a human's.

By the way, I owned and loved a cat for 16 years. We affectionately called him our firstborn. We now own an adorable Maltese mutt, who rounds out our family to a nice even number of 4.

Seems pretty simple to me: People before animals.