Sperm Science Brings Out the Proxmires Like Flying Monkeys - Science

This July 23, 2014, photo provided by University of Yamanashi shows a white mouse foster mother with pups. Freeze-dried mice sperm samples were launched in 2013 to the International Space Station and returned to Earth in 2014. The intense radiation of space caused slight DNA damage to the sperm. Yet, following in vitro fertilization on the ground, healthy offspring resulted. The baby mice grew into adults with normal fertility of their own. 

(Sayaka Wakayama/University of Yamanashi via AP)


After nine months in space, mouse sperm has yielded healthy mice, Japanese scientists reported Monday.

The freeze-dried sperm samples were launched in 2013 to the International Space Station and returned to Earth in 2014. The intense radiation of space caused slight DNA damage to the sperm. Yet, after in vitro fertilization on the ground, healthy offspring resulted. The baby mice grew into adults with normal fertility of their own.

ABC:  After 9 months in space, mouse sperm yield healthy mice

I'm sure you can hear the flying monkeys now since sex and science will bring them every time.

Ref:  "Wizard of Oz" for flying monkeys.


Proxmire was the classic Old Timey Luddite but he wasn't a simple opportunistic greaseball like Ted Cruz as Proxmire had some wit about him.  It's possible he respected good science but determining that which was bad science for some reason fell within his purview.

This was before Luddism had been fanned into a national pastime by fundamentalists, anti-vaxxers, and the general anti-science hoi polloi.

Ed: is it necessary for the political stab?

Absolutely necessary when those groveling bastards object to the science for no better reasons than politics and money.  They're a collective fucking disgrace to thinking people anywhere.


It's become so much the trend of late to consider colonizing everywhere from Mars to distant stars and the stars are a bit fanciful when there's no practical way to get to them but Mars is possible and we will want Earth animals there to, you know, utterly violate any sense of planetary quarantines.

Trying to ship breathing animals through space would be a nightmare no-one wants to consider but you could ship a load of heifers and some prize bulls for the amusement of all with that entire payload in a few test tubes.  In fact, the mouse specimens were freeze-dried so scratch the test tubes when you only need a fridge for the whole herd.