"Dr. Falcone said he first heard of uterus transplants about 10 years ago... Initially, he was skeptical."

"A trip to Sweden changed his mind. He went there in 2013 — like a doubting Thomas, he said — to see what the team was doing. He watched the surgery and spoke to several couples who wanted it. 'I almost cross-examined them,' Dr. Falcone said. 'I was thinking, "There’s got to be something wrong with these people."' But, he said, he came to understand how much pregnancy meant to them. 'It’s a legitimate request,' he said...."

From "Uterus Transplants May Soon Help Some Infertile Women in the U.S. Become Pregnant."

"If you think fetal-tissue research is wrong and should be banned, would you refuse to use any therapies that may come out of it?"

"I thought not. I’ve posed this question to abortion opponents before, but so far, no one has said, Yes, Katha, I would rather let Alzheimer’s turn my brain into cottage cheese and ketchup than benefit from this diabolical practice. If I get Parkinson’s, HIV, breast cancer, diabetes, or the flu; if I go blind from macular degeneration; if I have a miscarriage, so be it. Treatments for those conditions are still being developed, but surprise! If you have been vaccinated for polio, mumps, measles, chicken pox, hepatitis, or rabies, it may be too late for you to stand your ethical ground: You have already benefited from fetal-tissue research. This is, after all, a practice that’s been legal since the 1930s. In 1954, John Enders, Thomas Weller, and Frederick Robbins won the Nobel Prize for work on the polio virus that paved the way for the Salk and Sabin vaccines. They used fetal tissue, the monsters. Should their heirs return the medals?"

Writes Katha Pollitt in The Nation in a piece titled "Fetal-Tissue Bans Are All About Making Abortion Providers Look Like Monsters/Life-saving research is collateral damage in the war on Planned Parenthood."

Eradicating river blindness.

I'm reading about William C. Campbell, "a master's and doctoral graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, [who] was awarded a share of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine."

River blindness... has been nearly eradicated thanks to Campbell's discoveries and the work of the Carter Center, which, working with the drug manufacturer Merck, has distributed more than 225 million free doses of the drug....