Bill Crawford: Dances of the sugar plum politicians

December 20, 2010 11:36:00 AM

Ho, ho, ho.

No, no, that''s not Santa Claus.

Those are chuckles at the spectacle of sugar plum politicians as they dance around potent issues.

The Washington Post featured the new dance of our own Senator Roger Wicker last week. He had put 223 earmarks worth $415.5 million into the Senate''s omnibus spending bill, then twirled around and helped kill the bill at the last minute. He was for it, but now he''s against it, wanting to "change the way business is done in Washington."

Ironically, this resulted in a story in the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal about the bill''s demise right after a story ran in the Starkville Dispatch quoting Mississippi State University President Mark Keenum saying "we''re hoping thisA year ago, a baby girl was born by caesarean section in a hospital in São Paulo, Brazil, after being conceived by IVF. What made the birth unique was that the child had been gestated in a womb transplanted from a 45-year-old woman who had died.

Births resulting from uterus transplants have been happening since 2014, but for all previous children conceived this way, the donor was alive. That, understandably, places severe limits on the availability of the organs. This demonstration, reported in the Lancet – that a uterus can be successfully preserved and transplanted from a deceased person – could relax the supply bottleneck for women otherwise unable to conceive because of uterine problems.

The recipient in this case was a 32-year-old born with a condition called Mayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser (MRKH)