Archives for December 2009

A young Ottawa-based researcher thinks she may have found something that would help adult brains repair themselves:

Her experiments, which build on the growing understanding of how a baby’s brain is different from that of an adult, could lead to novel therapies for brain or spinal cord injuries.

Until about the age of two, the neurons in the human brain are still growing, stretching out long arms known as axons to form connections and build networks and circuits. After that, experience and learning shape those connections largely through pruning, said Dr. Smith, now 32 and running her own lab at Carleton University. Superfluous connections are trimmed; those used more frequently are strengthened in a variety of ways that don’t involve the growth of axons.

This suggests that a mechanism must kick in during the toddler years to prevent neurons from growing and forming new connections, said Dr. Smith, who moved back to Canada in 2008 after doing post-doctoral work at Harvard University.

“There are signals from the brain saying, ‘Okay, the connections are formed, there is no need for you to grow.’ ”

Dr. Smith suspects this could be what prevents injured neurons in the brains and spinal cords of adults from repairing themselves.

Now, she and colleagues at Harvard have a found a molecule that appears to put the brakes on neuron growth in adult mice.

It is called SOCS3. When the scientists blocked it in adult mice with crushed optic nerves, the damaged neurons began to sprout.

Some of the new growth reached as far as the brain. The next step is to see if this is enough to restore the vision of the blind mice, said Dr. Smith, who reported her findings Thursday in the journal Neuron.

Can you imagine the potential?

There’s her book, obviously, in book form. But now there’s also the audio book – read by the lady herself.

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Andrea adds: The way I see it, there’s only one thing people should really want. That’s People for the Ethical Treatment of People t-shirts. Buy one today! Enter the code “Christmas” at checkout et voila, a two-for-one deal on high quality, thought-provoking fashion.

A fetus becomes a baby at birth? Having an abortion is safer than having a baby? There’s no heart beat at 10 weeks? A 10-week fetus is about as big as a fingernail?

According to these Planned Parenthood employees, that’s all true.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIXHrusvMDw&feature=player_embedded]

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Andrea adds: Seems to me it is almost impossible to offer the abortion choice and tell the truth. Because the science is pretty clear on that stuff, heart beat, etc. and mothers are also pretty clear on what they are doing. Ie. they know if they wait too long (pretend there were a wait list for abortions) they’ll end up with a baby in their hands. So it becomes the job of the “choice counsellor” to make a girl be comfortable with the decision to abort. Which is actually a form of influence, which is what we see here in this clip. Repeating multiple times “it’s not a baby” is meant to instill in that mother that she isn’t one, instead of saying “There’s no undo button” and how can we help you where you are at? How can we make this more comfortable? What can we offer you? Do you need protection from an older boyfriend? What do you need? These are the questions abortion clinics can’t ask. And my feeling is people rarely do ask those questions these days because they don’t want to “influence” but by not asking them, they are influencing a girl toward abortion. If you only have one choice, you don’t have a choice at all.

Hey, remember this? Looks like them ACORN dudes and dudettes aren’t losing much sleep over it.

You are going to be shocked, shocked, I tell you, when you read the conclusion of the “independent” review of ACORN’s recent activities by ACORN’s “independent” assessor, left-wing former Massachusetts AG and Common Cause president Scott Harshbarger.

Harshbarger has determined — wait for it — that ACORN engaged in no wrongdoing depicted in the nationwide undercover stings conducted by BigGovernment.com/James O’Keefe III and Hannah Giles.

Well, you know. It was only a few cases of overlooking the sexual exploitation of minors. Nothing major.

See, when we say we’re against state-sanctioned euthanasia (in part) because we worry about a slippery slope, this is what we mean.

A Dutch health researcher has called on the nation’s government to allow physicians to euthanize newborns based on foreseen suffering, rather than only actual suffering, reports the Dutch medical journal Zorgkrant.

Hilde Buiting, maintains that such an amendment would only conform the law to the current practice among physicians.

“The current guidelines state that there must be actual grave suffering on the part of the newborn,” she said, as quoted in Zorgkrant.  “In practice, physicians look not only to the actual suffering of the sick newborn, but also to the grave suffering foreseen in the future.  This reality should be included in the considerations in adapting the guidelines.”

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Andrea adds: This article points out that care for the terminally-ill in the Netherlands has declined since legalizing euthanasia:

Without elaborating, she admitted that medical care for the terminally-ill had declined since the law came into effect. She said more should have been done legally to protect people who wanted to die natural deaths. ‘In the Netherlands, we first listened to the political and societal demand in favour of euthanasia,’ said Dr Borst. ‘Obviously, this was not in the proper order.

Further to Andrea’s post from yesterday, with an even nastier twist. Now we in the West are urged to consider saving the planet from global warming by preventing more poor, non-white babies from being born.

That’s what I call progressive!

Don’t believe me? Read on:

Consumers in the developed world are to be offered a radical method of offsetting their carbon emissions in an ambitious attempt to tackle climate change – by paying for contraception measures in poorer countries to curb the rapidly growing global population.

The scheme – set up by an organisation backed by Sir David Attenborough, the former diplomat Sir Crispin Tickell and green figureheads such as Jonathon Porritt and James Lovelock – argues that family planning is the most effective way to reduce the likelihood of catastrophic global warming.

Optimum Population Trust (Opt) stresses that birth control will be provided only to those who have no access to it, and only unwanted births would be avoided. Opt estimates that 80 million pregnancies each year are unwanted.

This is the picture they used to illustrate the story:

Well. Imagine how relieved environmentalists in the West are going to be when they are able to offset their own carbon emissions that way! “It’s fine, honey, we can fly to Costa Rica eco-guilt-free! I bought enough credits to send three more shipments of condoms to Dakar and cover the cost of four abortions in Nairobi! Woo-hoo, party!”

I think I’m going to go idle the car for no reason.

You’ll have to forgive my naive ignorance of such things, but no, I did not know what this story would lead to. It had started out fairly innocently, or so I thought:

The 43-year-old supermodel – who is married to Rande Gerber – hopes people still think she’s sexy, even though she is now mother to two children, Presley, 10, and Kaia, seven.

She said: “I don’t want to be a cougar, I want to be a milf. I hate that word cougar and what it represents. Milf is a word I absolutely love.

“I like that tag because I think there is a worry for all models that the moment you have kids the perception of you is going to change.”

A ‘milf’ is an abbreviated slang term used to describe a sexy woman who has children.

How interesting, I thought. Nothing wrong with being an attractive mom, is there? I wonder what M.I.L.F. stands for? So off to Google I went, and if I were you I wouldn’t try that – it was one porn site after another. Turns out it stands for Mothers I’d Like to F***.

How lovely. Think her children appreciate?