Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
(Commentary) After an interview in Manning with Dr. Rexanne Struve, a matchmaker in science’s courtship of traditional agriculture, my drive-time home to Carroll was consumed by one conclusion: “I have seen the future of Iowa, and it is in Manning.”
I’m certainly not saying I can predict coming events. Struve showed me what the future could hold, and I’m just doing the reporting.
Struve Labs envisions a world of medicine in the not-too-distant future in which organs in specially raised pigs, and the pigs themselves, are used to eradicate diabetes, repair damaged knees and joints in men and women and provide a host of medical solutions, all through a process broadly known as xenotransplantation or animal-to-human transplants.
She and her colleagues are doing cutting-edge work in their Manning facilities — science that could create a burgeoning new high-tech agricultural industry with medical facilities around the world relying on their very special pigs – animals that could be bred and raised in the setting of the old Carroll County family farm but with the applied science of an exciting new age.
When Iowa’s political and economic leaders hatched the idea for the Iowa Values Fund and other programs designed to rev entrepreneurial engines, this is precisely the sort of development they were hoping to nurture.
What Struve is doing could change our lives, change the region, change the state — and, no overstatement here, change the very fate of man.
An emerging area for Struve could involve the use of pig pancreas cells in humans – a process that, if effective, could halt the march of diabetes, a disease caused when a human’s pancreas, because of genetic predisposition, overeating or other behavioral problems, can no longer secrete the insulin needed to process blood sugars.
It would be fantastic irony if, in fact, Struve’s pigs cured the pigs among we humans.
Nationally, diabetes is one of the top health issues, and medical problems associated with it by some accounts have surpassed those connected to smoking.
I asked Struve directly: Could this porcine science do for diabetes what the Salk vaccine did for Polio?
While the methodology is different — prevention versus cure — Struve said the impact in both cases is dramatic.
This isn’t wild brainstorming at a futurists’ meeting.
All of this is possible, if not imminent.
And it’s not surprising in the least that this spectacularly promising story is unfolding in Manning, Iowa, one of the more remarkable rural communities in the nation, a plucky place, and a city our governor would be wise to showcase.
We need to help Struve tell this story. We need to support her work — and we must get our lawmakers to see the future potential of this industry and the importance of making sure it’s not only born in western Iowa, but blossoms here as well.
Do you know where to vote on Election Day? Do you know what to bring with you? Get comprehensive voter information for your state here.
Sign up for our email newsletter