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Drop In Access To Abortion Would Reward Antiabortion-Rights Violence, Opinion Piece Says
After the murder last month of Kansas abortion provider George Tiller, "there is a very real danger" that the availability of abortion later in pregnancy "will end in this country -- not after public deliberation, legislative debate and majority vote, but because antiabortion absolutists on the fringe have intimidated and blacklisted doctors and successfully threatened violence against them," Jim Buie, author of the blog The Buie Knife, writes in a Newsweek.com opinion piece. Buie writes that his parents in the early 1950s chose to institutionalize his three-year-old-brother, who was born with severe Down syndrome, after their attempts to care for him left them with "severe emotional distress" and unable "to meet the needs of their healthy children."Buie continues that he "cannot say that the option of a late-term abortion would have been the right one for my parents." However, "some of the arguments advanced by pro-life forces disturb me," he says, especially a "tendency to romanticize, sentimentalize and idealize life with a cute, forever-young Down-syndrome "angel child."" Buie adds, "It"s an argument I find off-putting, especially when it"s espoused by people who have never been through the wringer trying to care for a child whose disability level is on the most severe end of the scale." He continues, "At the same time, it is very disturbing that until recently, the majority of Down-syndrome fetuses were aborted without expectant mothers receiving proper information or support."Because of Tiller"s murder, it is "possible there won"t be any doctors in the country willing to perform" abortion later in pregnancy, "even if prenatal tests indicate severe retardation," according to Buie, who adds that this would mean that "domestic terrorism could win." He concludes, "It would mean that parents like my own would no longer have a choice, and would instead be forced to endure the same harsh realities that were present in the 1950s" (Buie, Newsweek.com, 6/17).
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AARP Analysis Debunks Biologic Drug Industry Myth Association Presses Congress To Bring Less Costly Generics To Market Faster
A new analysis by AARP"s Public Policy
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During A Flu Pandemic Would NHS Staff Go To Work?
A survey of health care workers has revealed that as many as 85% may stay off work if an influenza pandemic did take hold of the country. The results of the survey, published in the open access journal BMC Public Health, suggest that levels of absenteeism may be significantly higher than current official estimates and that "willingness", rather than "ability", plays the largest role in health care workers" decisions as to whether to go to work or not.
Public Health

Study May Aid Efforts To Prevent Uncontrolled Cell Division In Cancer

Researchers from the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine have uncovered a remarkable property of the contractile ring, a structure required for cell division. Understanding how the contractile ring works to divide the cell may facilitate development of therapies to prevent uncontrolled cell division in cancer. The researchers show that - even though both cell volume and the length of the contractile ring are reduced during successive rounds of embryonic cell division - the duration or timing of cell division remains the same. Their study was published in the May 29 issue of the journal Cell. "We showed that contractile rings constrict at a constant rate that is proportional to the initial size of the cell, so that rings in larger cells constrict proportionally faster than rings in smaller cells," said Karen Oegema, PhD, associate professor at the Ludwig Institute and the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at UC San Diego School of Medicine and the Moores UCSD Cancer Center. "Because of this property, the time required to complete cell division remains the same during embryogenesis, even as cells get smaller." During their early development, embryos are progressively partitioned into smaller and smaller cells by successive rounds of cell division. The division of one cell into two is accomplished by the contractile ring, which is assembled from two protein filament types also used in muscle. During cell division, the genome is replicated and the two copies are separated to opposite sides of the cell. A contractile ring forms a belt around the cell middle; constriction or closure of this ring "tightens the belt," pinching the mother cell into two daughter cells. In early embryogenesis, cell volume and the length of the contractile ring around the cell middle are reduced at each successive round of cell division. By contrast, the dimension of the chromosomes - which carry the genetic material that is segregated to the daughter cells - remains constant. The discovery that contractile rings constrict at a constant rate, proportionate to the initial cell size, opens the door to further studies of the mechanism. "Further studies of the contractile ring could ultimately lead to improved therapies for cancer," said first author Ana Carvalho, PhD. "Understanding the cellular machinery required for cell division may teach us how to prevent the uncontrolled cell division that occurs in cancer." Arshad Desai, PhD, professor at the Ludwig Institute and assistant professor of cellular and molecular medicine at UCSD also contributed to the paper. Funding was provided by the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, the Pew Scholars Program in the Biomedical Sciences, the FundaÃýão para a Ciência e Tecnologia, Portugal, and The European Social Fund. Steve Benowitz University of California - San Diego


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