I have tried to accept all of the negative emails and personal messages that I have received over the years on the Stem Cell issue that have been sent to me. Many of them have called me names and tried to influence my views with the latest rhetoric they have found on the net but to no avail.

Because Vicky if you have a view you have to realize that any comments on your view or the subject matter of that view is not relective on you as a human being.

Nor is it on me. You can't make it personal no matter how hard you try to. On this forum as well as many others you will find those who have divulged some aspects of their personal lives while some have remained silent. Me I have mostly remained silent.

When you put out your personal views you have to be able to take the criticism as well as the support. That is debate and what are we here for if not debate.

We would be a sorry lot if everytime anyone disagreed with another they were held back from expressing it by fearing that that person would leave the site and knowing it would be because of them.

Then what would be left. A big nothing.

I was at a meeting the other night and someone there remarked that they thought I would have stopped attending seeing as I had developed Cancer and would put all my efforts into that area now. What exactly were they saying? I don't know and I don't care and I didn't even ask. If they want to talk I will be there when they do.

My point is that the effort I have put into Als and Parkinson's was not ever based on my personal feelings but the knowledge that it was there and I could in some way be a difference, maybe not make one but you never know who just may have been helped by my just being there.

The same goes for you as well. I have read just about all you have ever posted and while we don't agree on some things you have been read and heeded on many points.

But the vindication that we make a difference will not be as easy to define as you wold like.

You do make a difference and so do all who post here. That's a fact and it has to be enough.

Take the criticism if you deem it to be that and fight the good fight to change the opinion or recognize that two opinions are there and each supportable.

But if you must leave then do so but don't do it as a threat to make someone else feel guilty because they didn't support you.

That is not what we are all about. When the cure comes and in whatever state it does then my greatest hope is that all benefit. ALL

That to me is the only point of non-contention here.

I accept that you and I don't see eye to eye and you have made it clear but we are on the same path and if you get there first wait up for me.

Then we can go and sit down and chat about our lives and what and where we have come from. You will be surprised as I have been how much I hve in common with so many here.

And hey this isn't my disease even.

Ps
Take care all and I will be gone for a week or so but hope to see you ALL here when I come back. You will see me checked in sometimes as my daughter has agreed to keep me posted.

Thelma,

One of your finest posts! Good for us all to read.

paula

from: Washington Post

Darn Cells. Dividing Yet Again!

By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 10, 2007; D01

Coincidence or conspiracy? You be the judge.
Thursday, June 7. After months of intense lobbying by scientists and patient advocacy groups, the House is ready to vote on legislation that would loosen President Bush's restrictions on the use of human embryos in stem cell research. But that very morning, the lead story in every major newspaper is about research just published in a British journal that shows stem cells can be made from ordinary skin cells.
The work was in mice, but the take-home message that suffuses Capitol Hill is that there is no need to experiment on embryos after all.
If that doesn't sound suspicious, consider this:
Monday, Jan. 8. After months of intense lobbying by scientists and patient advocacy groups, Congress is ready to vote on legislation that would loosen Bush's restrictions on stem cell research. But that very morning, newspapers are touting new research just published in a British journal suggesting that stem cells can be made from easily obtained placenta cells. No need for embryos after all!
Is there a plot afoot?
Lots of lobbyists, members of Congress and even a few scientists are starting to think so.
"It is ironic that every time we vote on this legislation, all of a sudden there is a major scientific discovery that basically says, 'You don't have to do stem cell research,' " Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (Ill.) sputtered on the House floor on Thursday. "I find it very interesting that every time we bring this bill up there is a new scientific breakthrough," echoed Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), lead sponsor of the embryo access bill. Her emphasis on the word "interesting" clearly implies something more than mere interest.
"Convenient timing for those who oppose embryonic stem cell research, isn't it?" added University of Pennsylvania bioethicist Arthur Caplan in an online column. (The bill passed easily, but not with a margin large enough to override Bush's promised veto.)
Even some scientists, those exemplars of rationality, couldn't help but wonder if somebody, somewhere, was -- if not out to get them -- at least taking some pleasure in irritating them.
"I don't think this is the most sensitive timing for Nature to release these papers," said Harvard stem cell scientist Kevin Eggan, the lead author of one of the articles that appeared in the London-based journal on Thursday.
Twice in six months. What are the odds?
Actually, they are pretty good, experts said. After all, stem cell research is hot, and a lot of it is focused on finding ways to obtain the therapeutically promising cells without the scientific and ethical complications of dealing with human embryos.
"Papers are coming out about embryonic stem cells so regularly that the odds are going to be high that some will come out when Congress is voting on them," said David Ropeik, an expert in risk assessment at Harvard Extension School.
"It seems like a case of confirmation bias," agreed John Allen Paulos, an expert in probabilities at Temple University. "That's the tendency, once you've made a tentative judgment, to look for factors that seem to confirm your judgment and to ignore facts that say otherwise" -- such as all those other papers that were published when Congress was voting on other stuff.
Then there is the question of motive. The Brits are competing against Americans in the stem cell field and are legally allowed to conduct studies on embryos. Might they be aiming to dominate the field by helping the conservative and religious forces that have so far restricted U.S. scientists' access to embryos?
Or might the journals be trying, as one stem cell expert opined on the condition of anonymity, to leverage their visibility by publishing stem cell articles just as Congress is voting on the topic?
"Nature has no hidden agenda in publishing these papers," said the journal's senior press officer, Ruth Francis, in an e-mail. The real goal was to get the papers out before a big stem cell conference in Australia next week, she said.
Perhaps not surprisingly, it isn't only proponents of stem cell research who over-connect the dots.
"I will confess, I said to one of the congressional staffers of my general persuasion: 'Doesn't God have a sense of humor?' " said Richard Doerflinger of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which opposes embryo research and fought against the bill.
"There is somebody looking out for us! God is telling us He is there!" Doerflinger said, adding that he was half joking and recognizes that it is a "little presumptuous" to think that God is personally involved in the stem cell debate.
To Ropeik, the Harvard risk expert, the fact that people are imputing anything more than sheer coincidence is "just more proof that inside the Beltway the thinking is so myopic. They see the whole world through their own lens, and are blinded" to common sense.

But the urge is difficult to resist.


Consider the names of the lead scientists on one of the research papers released Thursday -- a paper suggesting that stem cell scientists might no longer need to rely on human eggs for their studies --

Kevin Eggan and Dieter Egli.
Eggs. Eggan. Egli.

C'mon. What are the odds?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/09/AR2007060901463.html

[From "Back to the future" soundtrack]

The power of love is a curious thing
Make a one man weep, make another man sing
Change a hawk to a little white dove
More than a feeling that's the power of love

Tougher than diamonds, rich like cream
Stronger and harder than a bad girl's dream
Make a bad one good make a wrong one right
Power of love that keeps you home at night

You don't need money, don't take fame
Don't need no credit card to ride this train
It's strong and it's sudden and it's cruel sometimes
But it might just save your life
That's the power of love
That's the power of love

First time you feel it, it might make you sad
Next time you feel it it might make you mad
But you'll be glad baby when you've found
That's the power makes the world go'round

And it don't take money, don't take fame
Don't need no credit card to ride this train
It's strong and it's sudden it can be cruel sometimes
But it might just save your life

They say that all in love is fair
Yeah, but you don't care
But you know what to do
When it gets hold of you
And with a little help from above
You feel the power of love
You feel the power of love
Can you feel it ?
Hmmm

It don't take money and it don't take fame
Don't need no credit card to ride this train
Tougher than diamonds and stronger than steel
You won't feel nothin' till you feel
You feel the power, just the power of love
That's the power, that's the power of love
You feel the power of love
You feel the power of love
Feel the power of love

____________________

the love study
NIH was actually paid to study "LOVE"

http://newsinhealth.nih.gov/2007/Feb...eatures_01.htm

The Power of Love
Hugs and Cuddles Have Long-Term Effects




Find ANY wordFind ALL words Find EXACT phrase






How often do you hug? Do you like to sit close and hold each other’s hands? Recent research shows it’s good for your health. Between loving partners, between parents and children, or even between close friends, physical affection can help the brain, the heart and other body systems you might never have imagined.

For centuries, artists have examined love through poetry, painting, music and countless other arts. In the past few years, scientists supported by NIH have begun to understand the chemistry and biology of love.

At the center of how our bodies respond to love and affection is a hormone called oxytocin. Most of our oxytocin is made in the area of the brain called the hypothalamus. Some is released into our bloodstream, but much of its effect is thought to reside in the brain.

Oxytocin makes us feel good when we’re close to family and other loved ones, including pets. It does this by acting through what scientists call the dopamine reward system. Dopamine is a brain chemical that plays a crucial part in how we perceive pleasure. Many drugs of abuse act through this system. Problems with the system can lead to serious depression and other mental illness.

Oxytocin does more than make us feel good. It lowers the levels of stress hormones in the body, reducing blood pressure, improving mood, increasing tolerance for pain and perhaps even speeding how fast wounds heal. It also seems to play an important role in our relationships. It’s been linked, for example, to how much we trust others.

Dr. Kathleen C. Light of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill studies oxytocin in married couples and those permanently living together. She and her colleagues invite couples into the laboratory and ask them to spend at least 10 minutes holding hands and talking together about a happy memory, usually about how they met and fell in love.

“What we’re trying to do in a lab situation,” Light explains, “is recreate some of the experiences in real life where they felt close.”

The couples then get their blood drawn and fill out a questionnaire about the quality of their relationship. When the researchers compared their responses to the levels of oxytocin in their blood, they found that people who have a more positive relationship with their partner have higher levels of oxytocin.

Light and her colleagues are now trying to understand how conflict and other factors in relationships affect a couple’s oxytocin levels. The results of those studies aren’t yet in.

One thing researchers can say with certainty is that physical contact affects oxytocin levels. Light says that the people who get lots of hugs and other warm contact at home tend to have the highest levels of oxytocin in the laboratory. She believes that frequent warm contact may somehow prime the oxytocin system and make it quicker to turn on whenever there’s warm contact, even in a laboratory.

The same holds true for mothers and infants: they both produce higher levels of oxytocin when they have lots of warm contact with each other. “Those women who hold their babies more at home have higher responses when they hold their baby in the lab,” Light says.

Much of what we know about oxytocin has come from research in animals. Mother rats, for instance, can stimulate oxytocin in their pups by licking and grooming them. This loving care has long-term effects.

When researchers separate pups from their mothers for 10-15 minutes a day and then reunite them, many mothers are so glad to see their pups that they lick and groom them intensively. If the separation lasts for several hours, however, it can have the opposite effect; the mother won’t lick and groom her pups. Some mothers just never lick and groom their pups when they come back.

Pups that are groomed a lot when they’re reunited with their mothers become more comfortable exploring new environments. The ignored ones develop more anxiety disorders, produce higher levels of stress hormones and have higher blood pressure.

Research from other animals, including monkeys, confirms that the quality of care a mother gives her offspring can have long-term effects on their personality characteristics and mental health as well as physical problems like heart disease.

Animal research is also shedding light on oxytocin’s role in other social bonds. Mice that lack oxytocin can’t recognize other mice, even after repeated encounters. When they’re given oxytocin, however, they can recognize other mice again.

Dr. C. Sue Carter, co-director of the Brain Body Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has been studying oxytocin in prairie voles, which form strong bonds with their mates. When the researchers block oxytocin, the voles don’t form such bonds. Oxytocin is especially important for females to form bonds with their mates. In males, a related hormone called vasopressin also plays a role.

Oxytocin and vasopressin aren’t miracle compounds, however. Giving these hormones to other animals—even other types of voles that don’t normally form social bonds—doesn’t suddenly cause them to form loving bonds. Animals must have the proper genes to respond to these hormones in the first place.

“Most of us are genetically programmed to form social bonds,” Carter explains, relating the results back to people. But the ability to form close bonds, she says, is shaped by early experiences. In the end, a complex interaction of genes and experience makes some people form social bonds more easily than others.

We may not yet fully understand how love and affection develop between people—or how love affects our health—but research is giving us some guidance. Give those you love all the affection you can. It can’t hurt, and it may bring a bounty of health benefits.

- please read more at the link atop the page...

PS: oxytocin - natural
oxycontin - bad drug - major addictive drug - number one street drug in the USA?

Be who you are and say what you feel,
because those who mind
don't matter
and those who matter don't mind.

- Theodore Seuss Giesel

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When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who,

instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures,
have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.

The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion,

who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement,

who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and

face with us the reality of our powerlessness,

that is a friend who cares.

--Henri Nouwen, Out of Solitude

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"Übermensch -is the german word a dictator used to refer to himself, as
"superman" -and this is the attitude of a crippled mind :closed: -

we have so many options of using our own stem cells, but ole george has
got a plan - "his fight", he is for death he is the "war president" quote -end quote...

a photo of Mr. Bush talking a walk in his favorite vineyard -