Kidney theft: not just an urban legend, it actually happens

clipped from www.newsweek.com Mohammad Salim Khan, 33, was squatting on a corner where unemployed day laborers congregate, looking for work, in the Uttar Pradesh town of Meerut, when a bearded man offered him a three-month job in Delhi that would pay about $3 a day When he woke up hours later, he had a horrible pain in his abdomen, and a man in a surgical mask was leaning over him. "Your kidney has been removed," the man said. "Don't tell anyone after you leave here. Not your friends or family or relatives or anyone. If you say anything, one of our guys will find you and shoot you." It sounds like a sci-fi movie or an urban legend. But Indian police, who broke into the house where Khan was being held not long after his surgery, say that organized gangs who steal, or buy, kidneys and other organs for illegal transplant operations are an all-too-common reality here, where some 320 million people survive on less than $1 a day. Mohammed Salim Khan, 33, recovering from the theft of his kidney in Gurgaon, India

Reagan $50 Bill?

clipped from www.cnn.com The $50 question: Grant or Reagan? Should Ulysses S. Grant, the legendary Union general and 18th president of the United States, be bumped from his 96-year stint on the $50 bill? Yes, according to one North Carolina Republican. Rep. Patrick McHenry announced that he will introduce a measure that would replace Grant's face with Ronald Reagan's, just in time for the 40th president's 100th birthday next February. McHenry says it's only logical for Reagan to replace Grant on the $50 bill because several historians have ranked Reagan as a much better president than Grant. McHenry specifically cites a 2005 Wall Street Journal survey of scholars who placed Reagan at No. 6 and Grant at No. 29. But not so fast, says Dr. John Marszalek, the executive director and managing editor of the Ulysses S. Grant Association. Calling him a "beacon" of the 19th century, Marszalek said Grant deserves to keep his prominent spot on America's currency.

Grow Your Own Teeth Replacements

clipped from www.neatorama.com Grow Your Own Replacement Teeth clipped from www.neatorama.com A group of British scientists suggest that you will soon be able to replace missing teeth by growing replacements. The procedure is fairly simple. Doctors take stem cells from the patient. These are unique in their ability to form any of the tissues that make up the body. By carefully nurturing the stem cells in a laboratory, scientists can nudge the cells down a path that will make them grow into a tooth. After a couple of weeks, the ball of cells, known as a bud, is ready to be implanted. Tests reveal what type of tooth – for example, a molar or an incisor – the bud will form. The procedure holds great promise in the U.K., where “the average Briton over 50 has lost 12 teeth from a set of 32.”