By Hilary White

CHICAGO, June 29, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A new US study offers insights into the way stem cells from umbilical cord blood can be used to successfully treat diabetes. Researchers at the University of Florida College of Medicine studied twenty children aged between two and seven with type 1 diabetes, seven of whom were injected with cord blood cells. The researchers concluded that the study suggests that the cells “jump-start” and correct the patient’s own immune system.

"This is the first attempt at using cord blood as a potential therapy for type 1 diabetes. We hope these cells can either lessen the immune system's attack on the pancreas or possibly introduce stem cells that can differentiate into insulin-producing cells," said the lead researcher, Dr. Michael Haller.

Yes, chalk another one up for adult stem cells, the kind that don't involve the destruction of a human life.

The number of British children under five diagnosed with a specific type of diabetes has risen five-fold over 20 years due to unidentified environmental factors, a study said on Friday.

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"This could either mean that we are being exposed to something new, or that we now have reduced exposure to something that was previously controlling our immune responses," said Professor Polly Bingley from Bristol University.

"We now need to work to identify what these changes might be," she added.

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WHEN CRITICS BEMOAN the politicization of science, they usually point a bitter finger at the Bush administration. Their condemnation should actually be aimed in the opposite direction. Increasingly, it is the scientists themselves--or better stated the leaders of the science sector--who are devolving science from the apolitical pursuit of knowledge into a distinctly ideological enterprise.

The creation of a new 527 advocacy PAC called Scientists and Engineers for America (SEA) is the latest example of this phenomenon. SEA claims to be entering the political fray because the nation's leaders "systematically ignore scientific evidence and analysis, put ideological interests ahead of scientific truths, suppress valid scientific evidence and harass and threaten scientists for speaking honestly about their research." But most of the problems SEA identifies on its website as supposedly threatening science are actually disputes about ethics, philosophy, or social theory--areas of human concern that are not within the scientific realm.

High-tech detective work apparently has found the missing "a" in one of the most famous phrases ever spoken.

Astronaut Neil Armstrong's first words from the surface of the moon on July 20, 1969, now can be confidently recast, according to the research, as, "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."

The idea that the world population experienced a dramatic boom in the proportion of young people after World War II due to decreased childhood mortality and other improved living conditions, necessitating population control measures that saved us
from an unsustainable infestation of rugrats, is not true. “At the world level, the population in 1950 was relatively young, having 34% of its members under age 15 and barely 8% aged 60 or over,” says UNDP. This was despite the fertility decline of the Great Depression and the massive loss of young lives in World War II. “Between 1950 and 1975, as mortality decline accelerated, particularly in the less developed regions, both the proportion under age 15 and that aged 60 or over increased, to reach 37% and about 9% respectively. Overall, therefore, the population of the world became slightly younger from 1950 to 1975.” So the world remained in demographic balance, and major demographic changes did not take place until after 1975—after population control and feminism had begun to take firm hold in most of the world.

And now population control has lead to the specter of rapid population aging and attendant social and economic decline as fewer and fewer workers attempt to support more and more elderly, first in the First World, then globally. The UNDP urges that action be taken soon, before the crisis gets out of hand. What did those at the pinnacle of the international community in influence and funds have to say on World Population Day 2006?

The latest coordinated string of attacks began late in December 2005 with a report issued by NARAL Pro-Choice Texas entitled Crisis Pregnancy Centers: A Hidden Threat to Women's Health? Since then, the attacks have continued with additional reports issued by the National Abortion Federation and other groups who are angered that pregnancy centers have begun to compete for federal grants that enable them to present abstinence-based educational programs, instead of the "safe-sex" programs that such groups tellingly support. Additional IYD grants have been awarded to a small number of pregnancy centers to enable them to enable them to provide medical services to low income women.

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The Thomas More Law Center, a national public interest law firm based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, had filed a friend of the court brief seeking the dismissal of Newdow’s national motto lawsuit.

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The question of intelligent design has flooded the news this year with the Dover, Penn. trial over the place of ID in public education. With many questions still left unanswered about ID theory, this event will allow the public access to hear from top ID experts and its critics.

The event will be held in the format of a press conference. Panelists representing ID include Mike Behe, Professor of Biochemistry, Lehigh University and Senior Fellow Discovery Institute; Paul Nelson, Adjunct Professor, Biola University; Guillermo Gonzales, Assistant Research Professor of Astronomy, Iowa State University; Jonathan Wells, Senior Fellow, Discovery Institute; and Steve Meyer, Director and Senior Fellow of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute, Seattle.

Those cross-examining the panelists will include: Antony Flew, noted philosopher; Keith Morrison of Dateline NBC; and faculty from Cal State Fullerton: Bruce H. Weber, Ph.D. Professor of Biochemistry; James R. Hofmann, Ph.D. Professor and Chair, Liberal Studies Department; and Craig M. Nelson, Ph.D. Lecturer, Department of Comparative Religion.

The event will be held in Sutherland Auditorium at Biola University from 7:30 to 9:30 p.m. More than 1,000 attendees are expected.