The Onion has finally put the majority of their archive back online. I am strangely drawn to “WASHINGTON, DC–Mere days from assuming the presidency and closing the door on eight years of Bill Clinton, president-elect George W. Bush assured the nation in a televised address Tuesday that “our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over.”
At the time, it was rude and snide. Now it’s just pathetic and accurate.
Of course, in more heartening news, we have: ‘Miracle mouse’ can grow back lost limbs. Looks like they even have an injection that gives normal mice this power. It was only a dozen or so genes, or so they’re saying.
Scientists have created a “miracle mouse” that can regenerate amputated limbs or badly damaged organs, making it able to recover from injuries that would kill or permanently disable normal animals. The experimental animal is unique among mammals in its ability to regrow its heart, toes, joints and tail.
Details of the research will be presented next week at a scientific conference on ageing, Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence, at Cambridge University. Ellen Heber-Katz, professor of immunology at the Wistar Institute, an American biomedical research centre, says that the ability of mice at her laboratory to regenerate appears to be controlled by about a dozen genes. She is still researching their exact functions, but it seems almost certain that humans have comparable genes.
“We have experimented with amputating or damaging several different organs, such as the heart, toes, tail and ears, and just watched them regrow,” she said. “It is quite remarkable. The only organ that did not grow back was the brain.
“When we injected foetal liver cells taken from those animals into ordinary mice, they too gained the power of regeneration. We found this persisted even six months after the injection.”
Meanwhile, the Pope says: HAVE MORE BABIES. He totally failed to add “even if you can’t feed them! Even if they’re only a poor tool to prop up your failing marriage! More babies, dammit! And for the love of Christ, don’t let them be adopted by priests gays brown people anyone who’s not just like you and me!
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