I am writing today to announce the closure of the Michigan Messenger. After four years of operation in Michigan, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news into a single site, The American Independent at Americanindependent.com. This is part of a shift in strategy, towards new forms [...]
An abstinence-only presentation provided to numerous school districts in Calhoun and Eaton Counties in October of this year provided false and misleading information to students about HIV, experts allege.
Two county registers of deeds filed a class action lawsuit Monday on behalf of Michigan’s 83 counties alleging that the Mortgage Electronic Registration Services owes millions of dollars in property title transfer taxes.
Despite evidence of the impact of mercury on children and public health, Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette last month joined with 24 other state attorneys general in filing a lawsuit to scuttle new EPA regulations that would reduce mercury emissions from power plants.
The Lansing State Journal reports that two of the three major research universities in the state, the University of Michigan and Wayne State University, are planning to expand their stem cell research programs in the wake of the passage of Proposal 2 earlier this month. Michigan State University is proceeding more slowly, forming an advisory committee to study the legal and ethical questions.
Proposal 2 legalized the development of new stem cell lines in the state of Michigan. Those new lines can be derived only from leftover blastocysts from fertility clinics and only with the permission of the egg and sperm donors. Researchers says they are receiving calls from fertility patients with excess blastocysts in cryogenic storage they want to donate for scientific study:
“The day after the election, the university started getting phone calls from patients who wanted to donate embryos that could no longer be used,” said Sean Morrison, director of U of M’s Center for Stem Cell Biology.
The university isn’t accepting such donations yet. Internal oversight groups still need to approve the first round of research proposals, Morrison said.
But he expected that such approvals would be done before spring and was optimistic about the progress that would follow.
During in vitro fertilization fertility treatments, doctors will fertilize as many eggs as can be harvested from the female. They then typically choose the strongest one or two to implant, while the rest are frozen for future use. If pregnancy is successful, those frozen embryos can either be used for scientific research or they will end up being discarded.
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