In case you missed it, former Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer’s letter to President Jimmy Carter (I bet Bill Clinton would have been happy to co-sign it): August 21, 2006 The Honorable Jimmy Carter The Carter Center 453 Freedom Parkway Atlanta, Georgia 30307 Dear Mr. President: I just read the transcript of your interview with the…
Peace-process activist M.J. Rosenberg says that if the Democrats want to retain the seat of retiring Maryland Senator Paul Sarbanes, then they need to nominate Kweisi Mfume instead of Rep. Ben Cardin. If the Dems go with Cardin, then many African-Americans will cross party lines to vote for the GOP candidate, Michael Steele, who is…
Earlier this week Ned Lamont accused Senator Joseph Lieberman of not being critical enough of the Bush adminsitration’s handling of Hurricane Katrina. Lieberman says he’d love to debate the issue and asks: “Where was Ned Lamont?”
“The ball tails away from him when it’s on the far side of the court,” Jonathan Erlich whispers to his doubles partner, Andy Ram, as Ram gets ready to receive serve. Ram nods, lightly slaps his partner’s hand lightly and heads up to the net. A minute later, he is flicking a perfect backhand volley…
The ordination of gay rabbis and the sanctioning of same-sex marriage within Conservative Judaism is near certain, according to movement leaders who spoke at a meeting in New York on Thursday night. Organized by the movement’s congregational arm, the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, the gathering offered a preview of the halachic opinions on homosexuality…
Three young girls with juvenile Tay-Sachs ? Dakota Bihn, Alexis Markowich, and Jashaia Small ? are currently receiving umbilical-cord-blood therapy at Duke University Medical Center. The girls are under the care of Dr. Joanne Kurtzberg, who, as the Forward reported last year, has already performed cord-blood therapy on children with Krabbé disease. Thanks to the…
For people who suffer from familial dysautonomia (FD), hope recently came in the form of an Israeli chicken egg. In 2001, a team led by Bar-Ilan University professor Ron Goldstein implanted human embryonic stem cells into chicken embryos to study the early stages of normal cellular development. Now, Goldstein is using embryonic stem cells to…
As a groundbreaking clinical trial examining the use of gene therapy in treating Canavan disease winds to a close, the country?s leading researcher into the hereditary brain disorder is now looking to stem-cell therapy to treat the disease. Dr. Paola Leone, director of the Cell & Gene Therapy Center at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical…
When Hispanic women in Colorado?s San Luis Valley were shown to carry a high frequency of the Ashkenazic breast-cancer gene, some genetic experts began to wonder. Subsequent investigations showed that the women in question were likely the descendents of conversos fleeing the Inquisition, who settled in the region late in the 16th century. A number…
In what was the first meeting of its kind, respected neurologists from around the globe held a conference August 1 at which they committed themselves to increasing awareness of adult polyglucosan body disease, a rare genetic disorder occurring primarily among Ashkenazic Jews. The nine-person scientific and medical advisory committee of the Adult Polyglucosan Body Disease…
Two clinical studies for the treatment of late-onset Tay-Sachs with Zavesca, a drug used to treat Gaucher disease, produced neutral results — “a scientific way of saying that it didn’t work,” said Kim Crawford, director of member services for the National Tay-Sachs & Allied Diseases Association. According to Crawford, Actelion, which produces Zavesca, will not…
