The Times of London is reporting,“Sir Richard Branson will launch his most controversial business to date as he moves into stem-cell storage and the biotech sector.” Huh? The stem cells in question come from umbilical cord blood. How in the world could that be considered “controversial?” Perhaps in the UK such private storage facilities are frowned upon: I don’t know. But storing UCB stem cells is utterly uncontentious. Indeed, last year here in the USA, Congress unanimously passed and the President signed into law, a bill creating regional UCB stem cell banks.
Notes on Anosmia
One morning several years ago, as my wife, Wendy, and I were having breakfast together, I had…
Empire of Unreality
Shiva Naipaul (1945–1985) was the author of three novels and two books of mordant dispatches from places…
The Dreadful Christ of Pär Lagerkvist
It’s dangerous to meet a god,” says the disgraced Pythia in Pär Lagerkvist’s The Sibyl. Her observation…