Read All About It

When I'm at work on a break I like to read magazines-I would estimate that I read around 30 a month. It's great for title awareness and can brighten up the most boring brown bag meal. When I'm reading a book I get very engrossed, easily losing track of time and can tend to get crabby when forced to put it aside when break is over. Magazines are easier to dip into-read the articles you are interested in and then call it good. (Also, if I'm staying in the building there will inevitably be a question or two as well-managers are never really on break if they're in the building.)

Besides the great Fitzgerald quote I cited in a previous post, this week I also read in Newsweek about an interesting survey conducted by a team from Johns Hopkins and Duke University. The survey took a novel approach to the whole stem cell research question by actually asking couples who were infertilty patients what they would like to see happen with their extra unused embryos. Out of 1000 couples surveyed, 60% said they would be willing to donate the embyros for research. Besides the legislative roadblock that is the federal ban on funding for reasearch that destroys embryos, the other major obstacle to stem cell research is lack of embryos. The surveyors point out that even if only half of the couples went through with the donation it could mean an additional 2000-3000 stem cell lines.

As someone with 2 diseases that reseachers believe might benefit, or even be cured, by stem cell therapies I am a keen supporter of as much research as possible and I applaud these folks for ignoring the inflamed rhetoric and actually getting to the heart of the matter by asking the involved parties. I sincerely hope the politicians, especially ones with presidential aspirations in their hearts, were reading Newsweek too.