Supreme Court Nominee, Kidney Donors, Child Cold Medicine

Trump’s Supreme Court Nominee Guest: Kimberly Robinson, Supreme Court reporter, Bloomberg BNA, covering the high court since 2012 President Trump has nominated Neil Gorsuch to fill the vacancy left by the passing of Justice Antonin Scalia a year ago.  Neil Gorsuch is a judge on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, which spans six Western states. His selection has been cheered by conservatives. Let’s get some background on Gorsuch and what he might face in confirmation hearings. Kidney Donor Certificate Guest: Jeffrey Veale, MD, Transplant Surgeon, Director of the UCLA Kidney Transplantation Exchange Program Pay it forward. That’s the premise of a creative new program for kidney donors pioneered at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. Just imagine someone you love is on the list of more than 100,000 people in America desperately hoping for a kidney transplant. You would gladly give them one of yours, but you’re not a good match. At some transplant centers, including UCLA, you can do a swap, where your kidney goes to someone else and their loved one gives a kidney to your loved one. These swaps sometimes turn into chains where, once your loved one gets a kidney, you give yours to someone else and their loved one gives to another person down the chain and so on.  Why You Probably Shouldn’t Give Your Kids Cold Medicine Guest: Edward Bell, Professor of Pharmacy Practice, Drake University A sick kid coughing so much that she can’t sleep – and neither can you . . . there are few parenting challenges more frustrating. Especially since doctors and drug manufacturers over the last 30 years have been continually revising the guidelines on which over-the-counter cold medicines are okay for kids and which aren’t. Much of what parents used to rely on to ease the cough and help a child sleep really isn’t recommended for youngsters anymore. What’s a tired parent to do? The Ethics of Stem Cell Research Guest: Alonzo Cook, PhD, BYU; Dr. Martin Tristani-Firouzi, U of U,  Last week, scientists reported in the journal Cell that they’d been able to coax human stem cells to survive in a pig embryo – an important first step toward being able to grow human organs in animals for transplant. Another team reported in the journal Nature that they used mouse stem cells to grow a mouse pancreas in a rat and then transplanted some of those pancreas cells back into the mouse and cured it of diabetes.  The science of stem cells is moving a lightning speed, so we thought now would be a good time to rewind our conversation from last fall about the status of that science and the ethical dilemmas that remain. Scientists years ago discovered ways to obtain stem cells that do not involve destroying human embryos. So now the ethical debate shifts to what might happen if we put human stem cells into an animal to grow a kidney or a pancreas and some of those cells also end up in the animal’s brain. Is the animal now part-human and entitled to be treated differently from animal subjects?