“What Iran’s Jews Say…”

Posted on February 25, 2009 by iPouya

New York Times: “Let them say ‘Death to Israel,’ ” he said. “I’ve been in this store 43 years and never had a problem. I’ve visited my relatives in Israel, but when I see something like the attack on Gaza, I demonstrate, too, as an Iranian.”

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3 Responses to “What Iran’s Jews Say…”

  3. Iran Affairs says:
    February 26, 2009 at 9:54 pm

    Iran a leader in stem cell scientific research
    The Scientist reports that Iran is becoming a force in the field of stem cell research:

    Iran is investing heavily in stem cell research, and despite researchers working with limited access to laboratory equipment and resources, the country may emerge as a scientific force to be reckoned with in the stem cell field.

    Even with their limited infrastructure, Iranian scientists have managed to isolate six human and eight mouse embryonic stem cell (ESC) lines over the past decade, and then successfully turn these cells into functional pancreatic, heart, splenic, and liver cells. “It’s remarkable that they were able to do what they’ve done,” Konrad Hochedlinger of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and Massachusetts General Hospital told The Scientist. “They are clearly catching up.”

    Unlike many western countries, where religious wranglings have hindered the progress of ESC research, in Iran and other Islamic countries research involving embryos is relatively uncontroversial. Islamic law states that full human life begins only after the “ensoulment” of the fetus, which is defined in the Quran as 120 days after conception. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, even publicly endorsed human embryo research in 2002…

    Iran was the 10th country in the world to successfully isolate human ESCs in 2003, and the fifth country to reprogram human skin cells to an embryonic-like state to create so-called induced pluropitent stem cells last year. Other landmark achievements include coaxing human ESCs to become mature, insulin-producing cells in 2004, cloning the country’s first sheep in 2006, and conducting the world’s first human ESC proteomics study in 2006…

    “I was shocked by how future looking [the Iranians] were with their science and medicine,” said Sarah Berga, a reproductive endocrinologist at Emory University in Atlanta who attended the Royan Congress from 2005 to 2007 and plans to go again this year. “This is not a country with a lot of material resources, but they’ve really made commitment to fundamental science.”

    Of course, stem cell research could be used to make WMDs, and obviously, Iran has no real need to engage in its own stem cell research since it can just buy whatever scientific stuff it needs from the West. Iran could be building WMDs with stem cell research at some undisclosed, well-dispersed and secret facilities whose existence has not been positively disproven, so the fact that Iran is investing in stem cell research is proof positive that Iran intends on keeping open the option of developing the capacity to build WMDs …. a sort of virtual stem cell WMD state. Right? Right? And so the UNSC should immediately demand that Iran give up all scientific research which could be used to make WMDs…stem cells, nuclear power, or even learning math. LOL!

    Posted on February 26, 2009 at 04:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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