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Cardiac Patch for a Broken Heart
Roland Piquepaille writes "People who suffered from heart attacks or other heart failures often need transplants because their hearts are essentially non-functioning. But imagine what would happen if it was possible to engineer living heart tissues to fix these broken hearts? This is what bioengineers at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City are starting to make. According to HealthDay News, their patches for broken hearts are made of heart tissue grown in the lab. Right now, animal trials are just starting and it will take at least a decade before human trials begin. But when these living bandages are ready for cardiac care, they'll have the potential to save millions of lives in the world every year."
Isn't Rolan a man's name?
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
Smoking is pretty evil... I've been doing it for years and want to quit. It's not easy.
There are a few things with your argument, though, that you might want to be aware of.
The mere suggestion that smoking is a significant bringer of pollution is not only idiotic, it's turning a blind eye to all the things that everyone relies on that make a much larger impact pollution-wise for the sake of hyping the problems with cigarettes. If we're going to tax cigarettes based on their ability to pollute, let's use it to build a mass-transit system that doesn't require the use of automobiles, as they cause significantly more pollution. Or perhaps, we should shutdown factories that make the materials used in things like... computers. Or paper.
On one hand you argue that smoking is "their problem", yet on the other hand you propose that smokers be cast out with no ability to socialize as they smoke. I still live in one the states where you can actually find a bar to smoke in, and there are plenty of options for smokers and non-smokers alike. If non-smoker Joe wants to come into a smoking bar and then complain about the second hand smoke, someone really needs to educate the man on what things like "freedom of choice" and "free market economics" are. If there's a market for non-smoking bars and restaurants (there is), there are going to be non-smoking bars and restaurants.
Likewise, if you're working in a smoking establishment, that's the risk you take. In fact, the state I live in has a policy that doesn't allow smoking in any establishment *except* these environments. If you can't find another job at equivalent pay to the average bartender or waiter, that shouldn't be my burden as a smoker to bear. After all, strippers aren't complaining that they have to work in bars where they take their clothes off, and have no other options.
I really don't enjoy smoking, at all. However, it is certainly not my job in life to tell others what they can do in their personal time, with like-minded folks, with all the harms laid out on the table. I'd love to see more effort put into educating people (not this "the truth" shock bullshit, real education, with all the facts, good and bad, laid out. Did you know that people who use nicotine are on average higher-functioning than their non-smoker counterparts?) than the government equivalent of a nun smacking the populace on the hand with a ruler.
Make people responsible for their own lives. Make people deal with the consequences. But having the government take money from people to then pay it out on their behalf later makes no sense.
Because
1) it just won't be there for them anyway, and
2) people then expect to be taken care of.
That in no way encourages responsibility.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
His homepage link is ref=nofollow'd. So you don't really have a reason to bitch anymore.