Abortion, being the divisive and highly emotional issue that it is, unfortunately makes people jump quickly to conclusions, and in some cases snap decisions. A perfect example of how emotions make us leap before we look occurred when in early 2012, Oklahoma State Senator Ralph Shortey hastily proposed a bill that would ban food “which contains aborted human fetuses in the ingredients.”

Shortey decided to take action after he reportedly heard news through the pro life group Children of God for Life that Pepsi and others were partnering with a company called Synomyx that was using stem cells in researching taste substitutes for sugar. The Internet, and it appears the senator from Oklahoma, got caught up in this to the point where people started believing that fetal tissue was actually ending up in the foods we eat.

While Shortey played damage control by saying he didn’t think human fetuses were in our foods, it’s hard to dispute what he hurriedly tried to pass into law.

Stem Cells for Taste Testing?

Senomyx has isolated receptors on cells that detect taste, then added them to HEK293 cells, the stem cell line in question. The company can then test countless additives to see which get the desired taste response much more quickly and efficiently than using people in studies.
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When an athlete gets injured, there’s a typical protocol. The usual treatments include physical therapy and sometimes surgery. These long standing treatments have been effective, but they take the athlete out of their game for quite some time. Lately, a new therapy has surfaced and athletes and doctors alike are loving the results. Plasma rich platelet and stem cell therapies are new treatments that are proving their worth and looking to become the new “go-to” therapy for injured athletes.

Plasma rich platelet (PRP) and stem cell therapies are administered by taking blood from the injured patient, placing the vial in a centrifuge to separate the components, and then injecting the plasma or stem cells back into the patient at the injury site. The healing elements of the PRP go to work directly on the injury and are claimed to speed the healing process. Stem cells work similarly.

In a nutshell, the patient is being treated with their own blood for expedited recovery.

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