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Big news from Switzerland today. Yes, it's possible to have big news from Switzerland. Apparently their diplomatic senses don't apply to babies. I'm not here to take sides on the matter, believe me, it just seems to have bad karma written all over it. Anyway, Switzerland, yeah.

Basically, a "research team, based at University Hospital of Lausanne, obtained a 4-cm skin donation from a 14-week aborted male fetus," and mixed it with collagen to make a nice little paste to apply to burns in kids. The paste seems to work marvels in that it re-grows skin instead of just healing. Cosmetic results were called "excellent in all eight children." Healing time also takes "15.3 days after the first cell application." That doesn't sound too shabby for burn wounds huh? I mean no one wants to be a burn victim, and if it works, let's do it... right?

First thing's first, who thinks to take skin from a dead fetus in the first place?! I've been embarrassed to pitch some ideas to people in the past, but how do you bring that one up at the board meeting? "Coffee tastes great, and baby fetuses are flooding the market-- we have to do something with them. Listen to this..." It's hard to pick what's worse: people doing this or the person who thought it sounded like a good idea at the time.

I guess if you're surrounded by burn victims all the time you'd build up a big sympathy for them and you'd really want to help out, but it's not like you trip over a baby fetus and say, "Heeeyyy-- I just got a great idea!" And this new paste hasn't been tried on adults yet, so the jury's still out there, but my mom was weirded out when I almost got a cadaver ligament in my knee, and that was from a dead adult. Do you really want a dead baby getting spread on you? It just has a hugh cosmic sense of wrong to me.

We should all be aware that people are looking into the fetal stem cells for everything now. This is because the stem cells (which come from a fetus) are "workable." You can make a stem cell into something else. Like when you're building a snowman. You want to do that when the snow's out and it's cold, but the more time that goes by the more likely it will melt and you'll just be splashing around. So there's why they study stem cells-- but you can get stem cells out of a lab-- these people ripped off an aborted fetus.

And no, I won't go out on an abortion rant or anything either-- this isn't a preachy site at all, but if we're growing babies for parts, what the hell's going on? I tell you what-- we need to start colonizing on other planets. In my eyes we have God up there looking down goin' "Okay, they're in a lull, a rut, but they'll pull through. Surely they'll get tired of being bombarded with sex and all that jazz." But at some point he might think, "There's no use, I gotta reset this game," and our world will just stop, and the Nintendo logo will flash up, and the whole ball will start rolling again.

Here's another question for ya-- do you think we even bother to study adult cells any more? I mean when I got my knee dug out they didn't graft me so well, and they took the skin from... me! How fair is that?! I guess it's okay, I'd rather have it from me than an aborted baby, but what do I know? In scientific research, it seems like fetal tissue is all the rage-- is anyone even bothering to look at adults for research? I'm sure there are a few renegade scientists out there looking into the power of adult cells, but they're probably the underground groups that don't get too much attention. They're like the Velvet Underground of researchers. We'll probably feel their impact later, but now they get no attention at all.

I guess I ought to get used to this whole use of baby cells, but it's hard to do when you respect the poor little developing guys. Then again, I was joking when I said "If it works, let's do it," but many people out there don't feel the same. I hope we don't meet King Koopa before I run out of lives.