Stem Cells for Parkinson’s

More success with ADULT stem cells:

"Stem cells derived from the endometrium (uterine lining) and transplanted into the brains of laboratory mice with Parkinson's disease appear to restore functioning of brain cells damaged by the disease, according to a new study by Yale School of Medicine researchers.

"The findings are published in the Journal of Cellular and Molecular Medicine. Although these are preliminary results, the findings increase the likelihood that endometrial tissue could be harvested from women with Parkinson's disease and used to re-grow brain areas that have been damaged by the disease, according to lead author Hugh S. Taylor, M.D., professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences at Yale School of Medicine, and section chief of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility at Yale School of Medicine.

"Because of their ability to divide into new cell types, stem cells could be the key to treating many different kinds of diseases, like Parkinson's, in which the body's own cells are damaged or depleted. Parkinson's is caused by a breakdown of dopamine-producing nerve cells in the brain stem. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that stimulates the motor neurons that in turn control muscles. When dopamine production is reduced, the nerves are not able to control movement or maintain coordination.

"In their study, Taylor and his colleagues collected and cultured endometrial tissue from nine women, and verified that they could be transformed into dopamine-producing nerve cells like those in the brain."

Michael J. Fox came to my state and spent $ millions on lobbying for embryonic stem cell research approval at the polls. The campaign was deceptive, never referring to the killing of human embryos for research, and it was expensive. It seems ironic that Fox's Parkinson's might some day be cured by non-embryonic stem cells instead. Admittedly, this advance is for women; perhaps it will be expanded somehow soon for men. I wish Fox well, and I hope for continued advances of this sort in all diseases. But there is still no news from the highly touted and extremely expensive embryonic stem cell quarter.

Piggliucci Gets Spanked

Carlin Romano teaches philosophy and media theory at the University of Pennsylvania. and is "critic at large for The Chronicle Review", a blog of the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Romano reviews Piggliucci’s new book, “Nonsense on Stilts”, and starts by defining a ”now common genre of science patriotism” … “A brave champion of beleaguered science in the modern age of pseudoscience, this Ayn Rand protagonist sarcastically derides the benighted irrationalists and glows with a self-anointed superiority. Who wouldn't want to feel that sense of power and rightness?”

This is only part of Piggliucci’s arrogation though. Like other members of this genre, Piggliucci has contributed to science not at all. Most of the members of the genre are biology teachers, writers, and – primarily – Atheist apologists and desperate-sounding evolutionists.

While Romano does not go that far in his critique, he does appear to take science more rationally than does any member of what he calls the science patriots. Romano realizes (in the sense of grasping the reality) that science has limits that are self-imposed rather than naturally imposed; that the products of science are invariably contingent and not necessarily related to truth. Piggliucci, on the other hand, mouths these principles but in no way brings them to fruition in his mind or philosophy. Piggliucci is a preacher of his version of truth.

Romano lists a few of the sarcasms and Ad Hominems foisted by Pigglucci. As Romano says, ”Tone matters. And sarcasm is not science.”

Of course, Piggliucci is not writing science; he is writing about science, or at least what he thinks is science. Having never been a contributing scientist (nor a student of philosophy) doesn’t seem to influence Piggliucci’s hubris toward making proclamations concerning those subjects. In fact, he is now in the process of defining a new fallacy, that of “fluffy thinking”, which apparently is any proposition not based on Philosophical Materialism. Fluffy thinkers are to be singled out for ridicule; it is a moral duty of the public intellectual, as Piggliucci’s website self righteously makes clear.

Self righteousness does not derive from logic or science. Logic and science naturally incubate a cautious objectivity, a hunger for more investigation, better hypotheses, new answers bringing new questions. Real scientists are cautiously objective, rather than caustically cocksure (Romano’s term).

The self-righteous are convinced that they own the truth (Truth); that they are therefore superior, morally; and therefore they are entitled. Entitled to what? To denigrate everyone who is inferior. The warriors use ridicule as their weapon, and rationalization as their back-up.

Romano:

”As an epigram to his chapter titled "From Superstition to Natural Philosophy," Pigliucci quotes a line from Aristotle: "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." Science warriors such as Pigliucci, or Michael Ruse in his recent clash with other philosophers in these pages, should reflect on a related modern sense of "entertain." One does not entertain a guest by mocking, deriding, and abusing the guest. Similarly, one does not entertain a thought or approach to knowledge by ridiculing it.”

The Science Warriors are not interested in entertaining thoughts counter to their own agendas. They are interested in issuing counter claims in the form of generating reductio versions of opposing logic, and attacking those false constructs with invective and ridicule. We will not likely see any definition of “critical thinking”, or of First Principles, or of rational processes from Piggliucci: it is doubtful that he has studied these or even recognizes their existence as real intellectual cornerstones. But he will create “fluffy thinking”, and will loudly assail that construct.