Mary Meets Dolly

    After hearing his amazing story I had to ask this doctor what he thought would fix our "broken" health care system here in America. First he said, "Your system is not broken. Canada's system is broken. Yours is just damaged."

    Second, he emphatically said, "Socialized medicine IS NOT the answer. When Barack Obama says he can cover everyone, he has no idea what he is talking about. Socialized medicine on a national scale in the U.S. would bankrupt the country in 10 years." In essence he said, "Health care for all is health care for no one."

    So I asked, "If socialized medicine is not the answer, what is?" And he replied, "Health savings accounts." I will try to paraphrase his reasoning. Every month many families or employers pay close to $2000 a month in insurance premiums. Most people do not even come close to using $2000 a month in medical expenses. That $2000 goes to the insurance company and is never seen again. Instead of giving that money to the insurance company, the monthly premium would go into a tax free savings account from which all medical expenses are paid directly by the patient. No referrals, no statement of benefits. etc. You see who you want to see about whatever, whenever. Instead of lining the pockets of the insurance company, that monthly premium will grow and grow, because it still belongs to you. This is a huge incentive to stay healthy and not abuse the health care system by, say, bringing your kid into the ER with an ear infection. Also you can use the health savings account to retire on if you wish. Along with the savings account, is a catastrophic insurance policy. This policy costs much less and will basically cover health care costs over a set amount, like $5000 per year.

I am no expert on health care. I am not pretending to be. I just wanted to share my experience talking to someone who really seemed to know the system and had some real suggestions on how to move forward. 

Here is a great video on health savings accounts and why they work better than traditional health insurance:

Rock Stars of Science Rudy Tanzi, Joe Perry, and Francis Collins

Image: Geoffrey Beene / GQ

Trendy science findings more likely to be wrong

Should fashionable scientific findings be subject to a higher burden of proof? Yes, says a study that found links between the research popularity of certain proteins and the accuracy of reports about their behaviour.

Researchers have suggested two reasons why trendy research fields may attract spurious results. First, there are greater rewards for getting positive results, so there is a stronger incentive to massage data or ignore "outliers" – a value that varies greatly from the rest of the data. Second, because more groups test trendy hypotheses. This would lead to more negative results too, but the positive ones tend to get reported more.

Now biologist Thomas Pfeiffer at Harvard University has found that "popular" results are indeed less reliable – at least those regarding protein interactions in yeast. Such interactions are of huge interest because they identify links between genes and their function.

Pfeiffer scoured the literature for reports that one yeast protein interacts with another, and compared these to systematic measurements of these interactions. Claims involving extremely popular proteins were only half as likely to be confirmed as ones involving less glamorous ones.

"With a vaccine not immediately on the horizon, microbicides that can remove cholesterol from cell membranes, rendering HIV non-infectious, may play an important part in controlling the AIDS pandemic," says James Hildreth, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of pharmacology and molecular science at Johns Hopkins and principal investigator of the study.

Researchers found that a starchy substance that drains cholesterol from a cell’s membrane can completely block HIV transmission. Using microbicides that contain this cholesterol-depletor during sex should be able to reduce or stop HIV transmission, according to the study.

This starchy substance that removes the cholesterol HIV needs to infect cells from cell membranes is called cyclodextrin.  It sounds like a drug, but it isn't.  Cyclodextrins are used for all kinds of things from diet supplements to Febreze.  Cyclodextrins are now being investigated as a treatment for Niemann-Pick disease, type C a fatal genetic disease of cholesterol metabolism.  Patients with Niemann-Pick disease, type C cannot break down cholesterol and it builds up in their cells.

Cyclodextrin could be used in a cream that would prevent HIV transmission during sex which just might squash the raging debates over condom use as a strategy to prevent the spread of AIDS.  This could mean a prevention of HIV transmission without the contraceptive effect.  A concept the Catholic Church could possibly get behind for married couples where one partner has HIV.

Hat Tip: The Scientist

One day my daughter came home from her Catholic school and told me that she needed $10 to bring to school for a project for charity.  She was told by her teacher that if she did not bring it, she would have to stay in detention during recess.

I was outraged.  Not by the $10 nor the charity project.  It was that the school had mandated charity from my child.  A lesson I did not want her to learn.  I contacted the principal and told him that once you mandate charity, it no longer is charity.  I informed him that my daughter had been robbed of a chance to act with true charity by willingly reaching into her piggy bank and freely giving to the poor.  An act that would have been as good for her as the people that would benefit from her $10.  Even if it were for a good cause, I never again wanted my child to be told that she has to donate money or face a penalty.  That is not charity, nor do I believe that it is Catholic.

More and more everyday I see a correlation to current events.  Like that Catholic school teacher, I see good Christians and other charitable Americans looking to the government to help the poor and disenfranchised with their tax money.  While they think they are being charitable by giving the government their money in the form of taxes to take care of the poor, I think it is lazy charity.

I am no biblical scholar, but I am sure that Jesus told us to feed the hungry and cloth the naked.  He did not say give your money to Caesar and have him take care of it.  Why? Because it is lazy.  Having money taken out of your check every month to pay for social programs for your fellow American who is down on his luck absolves you of any responsibility.  It lets you close your checkbook and plop down on the couch to watch your favorite reality TV show.  If you looked through your pantry for food items to donate to the local food bank and brought them down there, you might actually interact with people who are hungry.  If you wrote a check to a local charity, you will probably get inundated with junk mail and phone calls from other charities.  Very inconvenient.  If you volunteered your time to feed the poor and cloth the naked, you might actually have to interact with people in need.  No, giving your money to the government is much more convenient.

But this charitable laziness does not just hurt the poor, it hurts us all.   Real charity is good for you.  If you volunteered your time to feed the poor and cloth the naked, you might actually experience Jesus in another person.  The more we depend on the government to feed the hungry and cloth the naked, the less giving we become.  Not just in giving money, but in giving or our time and of ourselves.  An public policy expert has actually published a book about it. 

I have experienced this phenomenon first hand.  I lived in England for a year, and while I love the English for many reasons, being charitable is not one of them.  I found them to be pretty darn uncharitable.  Why?  Because every time they saw someone in need, the Brits I knew would just say that they pay their taxes so they do not have to do anything else to help.  If someone needed something they should look to the government to take care of it.  I really couldn't blame them.  I was making $4.50 an hour and paying a good portion of that in income taxes on top of a nearly 20% value added tax (VAT) on everything I bought.  I was just trying to get by and not feeling all that charitable myself. This of course is not all Brits, but the attitude was certainly more prevalent than I had ever seen before.

I fear that America is on its way to this angry and uncharitable state by abdicating our responsibilities to take care of our fellow man to the government.  Not only can the government not do charity as well as individuals, but by having the government feed the hungry and cloth the naked, we are being lazy and losing a chance to better ourselves with real charity.

Just in case you weren't convinced that IVF is human manufacturing.  From New Scientist:

AN ELECTRONIC ID tag that works even when cryogenically frozen could help prevent some of the mix-ups in IVF clinics that can cause heartbreak for would-be parents....

Part of the solution is a system called IVF Witness, which constantly monitors the identity of the gamete and embryo containers that are brought near to each other on the IVF lab bench - sounding an alarm if eggs about to be introduced to sperm, say, have come from the wrong woman.

The system, made by Research Instruments (RI) of Falmouth, UK, is installed in 16 of the nation's 90 IVF clinics. It uses 15-millimetre- square, sticky-backed plastic radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags to label any dishes or vials that eggs, sperm or embryos are placed into. The tags house a memory chip and a coiled copper radio antenna. Each tag's memory is programmed with a unique ID code that is transmitted by its antenna when an ultra-low-power radio pulse interrogates the chip.

As a sample moves through the IVF process, the ID code of every container it is placed in is logged, providing a secure ID audit trail. So, in theory, only sperm and eggs from the right couples can be brought together, and the resulting embryos will be implanted into the right woman.

Progressive Catholics were effectively sidelined during the Bush years. But now that we have a president who could be called metaphorically “Catholic” the way Bill Clinton was referred to as “Black,” there appears to be new space for our views in places of influence.

I know this is the same garbage spouted in the campaign, but I am still speechless. 

The United States has arguably the most advanced health care in the world.  Which is why I was surprised at how many Americans are going abroad for stem cell treatments using their own adult stem cells.  This is called an autologous stem cell transplant.  I read nearly everyday about patients going to China, India and Germany to get treated for anything from spinal cord injuries to autism.  I also read about patients who reside in these countries getting treatments for brain injury to type II diabetes with impressive results.  The Repair Stem Cell Institute which refers patients to reputable stem cell treatment centers around the world has a list of diseases being treated with autologous stem cell transplants that is a mile long. 

Remember, these are not cures, but therapies aimed at improving the symptoms of the disease and the quality of life for the patient.  It is also important to point out that these are not the stem cell treatments that have recently been in the news where patients have received stem cells from embryos or fetuses.  These are stem cell transplants using a patients own stem cells.

So why is this autologous stem cell tourism happening?  I have to ask why are these treatments not available in the United States?  The answer is simple: because of the Food and Drug Administration or FDA. It is my understanding that the FDA has categorized an autologous stem cell transplant as it would a drug and therefore autologous stem cell transplants must go through the same rigorous phase trials that a new drug would.  From the FDA Regulation of Stem-Cell–Based Therapies in the New England Journal of Medicine:

Any stem-cell–based product that contains cells or tissues that "are highly processed, are used for other than their normal function, are combined with non-tissue components, or are used for metabolic purposes" — and that includes most, if not all, of them — would also be subject to the Public Health Safety Act, Section 351, which regulates the licensing of biologic products and requires the submission of an investigational new drug application to the FDA before studies involving humans are initiated.

So because stem cells would be removed from the body and "processed" with components not from the patient to get them to grow, the FDA has ruled that an autologous stem cell transplant is like a drug.  There are those who disagree with this assessment basically taking the stance that because the stem cells come from the patient, they should not be considered a drug. The American Stem Cell Therapy Association (ASCTA) is a group of doctors who have drawn up guidelines for the safe use of adult stem cells by physicians without oversight from the FDA.  From an ASCTA press release:

ASCTA physician member, Frank Falco, M.D. stated, "The FDA's position against someone using their own stem cells is taking it too far. We are talking about a person using their own tissue to treat a degenerative disorder or process safely without the use of medications or surgery. Although we agree that oversight and standards are necessary, this should be provided through a physician organization such as ASCTA rather than by a government agency."

Now, I want to make something clear.  I am not a doctor so I am not qualified to speak on whether or not autologous stem cell transplants are safe or whether the FDA regulations are appropriate.  I am not advocating either position, I simply want my readers to understand the reasons why the United States is not offering the same adult stem cell treatments as other countries around the world and why American patients are seeking adult stem cell treatments elsewhere.

A special thanks to Don Margolis at the Don Margolis Blog for the wealth of information and resources.

That is why we need fathers to step up, to realize that their job does not end at conception; that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child but the courage to raise one.

He is absolutely right.  Kudos to our President for having the courage to say it.  But this statement begs the question: if a father's job does not end at conception, does that imply that his job begins at conception?  I believe it does.  But that means a  child's life begins at conception.  This subtle admission outs his "above my pay grade" comment as political speak.  Even the President knows what we all know in our hearts.  Human life begins at conception.  A father's job begins at conception because his child begins at conception.  It is just that simple.  Dave Andrusko writes:

As men we must never let ourself, or any other guy, off with the "society tells us" slogan/excuse. Sure, there are a million ways the message is conveyed that in such a crisis pregnancy situation, the decision is exclusively the woman's. But, deep down, all men know otherwise....

Men can wash their hands of decision-making responsibility--they can abandon the girl/woman-- but not erase their moral and ethical obligations. They can tell themselves that "it's a woman's body," but not quiet the still small voice that tugs at their heart.

I found this scholarly article from the journal of Fertility and Sterility (via Biopolitical Times) on the ethics of sex selection.  Sex selection is essentially the practice of either aborting a fetus who is the wrong sex or using IVF and preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) to screen embryos, implanting the ones that are the desired sex.  Sex selection happens for many reasons from a desire to have a "balanced" family to cultural preferences for sons.  The Catholic Church is clear that sex selection, no matter how it is achieved or for what reason, is unethical.

I do not have access to the article because I do not subscribe, but the abstract is certainly telling.  Researchers asked both primary care physicians (PCPs) and physicians who provide sex selection services (SSTPs) about the ethics of sex selection.   Here is what they found.  First the sex selection providers:

Sex-selection technology providers argued that sex selection was an expression of reproductive rights, was initiated and pursued by women, and was a sign of female empowerment that allowed couples to make well-informed family planning decisions, prevented unwanted pregnancies and abortions, and minimized the abuse of wives and/or neglect of children.

No surprise that those who get paid to provide sex selection services think it is all good.  But it is the perspective of the family physician that is most illuminating:

In contrast, PCPs challenged the concept of “family balancing” and questioned whether women could truly express free choice under family and community pressure. In addition, PCPs voiced the concerns that sex selection technologies led to invasive medical interventions in the absence of therapeutic indications, contributed to gender stereotypes that could result in neglect of children of the lesser-desired sex, and were not a solution to domestic violence.

So the doctors that actually take care of families do not think sex selection is such a great idea.  They clearly question the perspectives of their sex selection colleagues.  This is probably because they are in the trenches and actually provide care to a family long after the sex selection provider does their job.  According to BioPolitical Times one primary care physician said, "To say that you want a child based on whether they are male or female is almost degrading."  (I would go so far and say it IS degrading.)

I find this analogous to the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecology in England who proposed euthanizing sick infants while pediatricians who actually care ofor those sick infants called it "social engineering." 

Do I find it surprising that assisted reproduction docs who provide sex selection services say that sex selection is great?  Not  when they have made up the term "pre-embryo" to describe a preimplantation embryo to placate the moral concerns of their clients.  Some fertility docs even go so far as to say that an embryo has not been conceived yet so it is okay to toss them out if they do not pass the gender test.

What is my point here?  We should question the "ethical" perspectives of physicians offering sex selection services to couples because sex selection is making them money. Of course they will say what they do is "empowering" and an "expression of reproductive rights."  We should trust the ethical prespectives of the doctors who actually take care of children and families.  Primary are physicians are spot on when they question the ethics of sex selection.

    Conversing with Jérôme Lejeune

    In June 1978, I drove Dr. Jérôme Lejeune from the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport to St. John’s University, Collegeville, Minnesota, where he was to give a major address at an international conference.  I knew Dr. Lejeune only by reputation: pediatrician specializing in the treatment of children with chromosomal anomalies and renowned geneticist who had discovered the cause of Down’s syndrome some 20 years earlier.  At the time I met him, he was professor of Genetics at the University of René Descartes in Paris.  Until his death in 1994, he would focus his work and research on preventing and treating Trisomy 21, the cause of Down’s syndrome.

    Prior to heading northwest to St. John’s, we stopped at the University of Minnesota where Dr, Lejeune was scheduled to give a lecture to medical students on the intricate elegance of DNA and RNA.  He was obviously in his element—a quiet confidence and wonderful sense of humor underlay his love and gift for sharing an enormously complex, microcosmic world.  At the close, the students showed their appreciation by clapping beyond the norm.

    Back on the road, he asked about my life and work at St. John’s University and seemed genuinely interested in my responses.  But, I wanted to talk about infinitely more interesting things, to wit, his life and research.  After graduate school (in theology), I had taken two years of pre-med and could ask basic scientific questions, so I did.  What ensued was a fascinating tour of the beginnings of human life: helical structures, DNA replication, the unbelievably sophisticated world of genetics.

    Over many years of chromosomal research, Dr. Lejeune said he had come to the awareness that our human building blocks/structures could not have come to be by chance.  For him, the pattern was too singular, too reasonable, too amazingly elegant to come from molecular randomness.  And he expressed the hope that someday he would be able to elucidate more the intricate mathematical and physiological “formulae” behind the design itself.

    For the next hour and a half, I soaked up as much as I could.  What impressed me more than Dr. Lejeune’s knowledge, was his person.  He was passionate without being the least pedantic.  He obviously loved life, at every level.  At no time was he ever patronizing.  Indeed, he was enthusiastic and completely at ease talking about mundane stuff.  He was completely engaged and therefore engaging.  Every now and then he would let his French sense of humor bubble to the surface.  At one point, with a wry smile and eyes twinkling, he quipped that his house in Paris was older than the United States.  He had gauged me correctly—I responded with a loud guffaw and a “put ’em up” look.

    Dr. Lejeune was a man of faith.  Indeed, he exuded faith… in life, in science, in God.  He saw no barriers, no compartments, no built-in contradictions amidst “levels” of reality, from the biological to the spiritual.  

    Suddenly, we were at St. John’s; an hour and a half drive in just about a minute and a half.  An unforgettable ride at warp speed.

    Excerpts from “When Human Life Begins” (testimony by Dr. Lejeune before a US Senate Judiciary subcommittee [year unknown]):

    … Thanks to a refined sonar-like imagery, Dr. Ian Donald, from England, a year ago succeeded in producing a movie featuring the youngest star in the world, an 11-week-old baby dancing in utero (in the uterus). The baby plays, so to speak, on a trampoline! He bends his knees, pushes on the wall, soars up and falls down again. Because his body has the same buoyancy as the amniotic fluid, he does not feel gravity and performs his dance in a very slow, graceful, and elegant way, impossible in any other place on the Earth. Only astronauts in their gravity-free state can achieve such gentleness of motion. (By the way, for the first walk in space, technologists had to decide where to attach the tubes carrying the fluids. They finally chose the belt buckle of the suit, reinventing the umbilical cord.)

    When I had the honor of testifying previously before the Senate, I took the liberty of referring to the universal fairy-tale of the man smaller than the thumb. At two months of age, the human being is less than one thumb's length from the head to the rump. He would fit at ease in a nutshell, but everything is there: hands, feet, head, organs, brain, all are in place. His heart has been beating for a month already. Looking closely, you would see the palm creases and a fortune teller would read the good adventure of that tiny person. With a good magnifier the fingerprints could be detected. Every document is available for a national identity card.

    With the extreme sophistication of our technology, we have invaded his privacy. Special hydrophones reveal the most primitive music: a deep, profound, reassuring hammering at some 60-70 per minute (the maternal heart) and a rapid, high-pitched cadence at some 150-170 (the heart of the fetus). These, mixed, mimic those of the counterbass and of the maracas, which are the basic rhythms of any pop music.

    We now know what he feels, we have listened to what he hears, smelled what he tastes and we have really seen him dancing full of grace and youth. Science has turned the fairytale of Tom Thumb into a true story, the one each of us has lived in the womb of his mother.

    And to let you measure how precise the detection can be: if at the beginning, just after conception, days before implantation, a single cell was removed from the little berry-looking individual, we could cultivate that cell and examine its chromosomes. If a student, looking at it under the microscope, could not recognize the number, the shape and the banding pattern of these chromosomes, if he was not able to tell safely whether it comes from a chimpanzee being or from a human being, he would fail in his examination.

    To accept the fact that, after fertilization has taken place, a new human has come into being is no longer a matter of taste or of opinion. The human nature of the human being from conception to old age is not a metaphysical contention. It is plain experimental evidence.

This guy just cracks me up!

Members of the President’s Council on Bioethics were told by the White House last week that their services were no longer needed and were asked to cancel a planned meeting, a council staff member said Wednesday.

The council was disbanded because it was designed by the Bush administration to be “a philosophically leaning advisory group” that favored discussion over developing a shared consensus, said Reid Cherlin, a White House press officer.

President Obama will appoint a new bioethics commission, one with a new mandate and that “offers practical policy options,” Mr. Cherlin said.

Philosophy?  Forgit-about-it.  Who needs to discuss ethical questions when a "shared consensus" is what really matters?  (I am reminded of a science major who I once knew that said that philosophy was a waste of time because "no one can agree."  What he really meant was that it scared him because he couldn't think his way out of a paper bag.) 

Why discuss tough issues facing humanity when you can just look at the practicalities?  Joe Carter from First Things writes:

In other words, the Obama administration already knows where it stands on all those pesky moral issues like human cloning, chimeras, and euthanasia, and just needs a group to provide advice on how to implement its preferred policies.  Whereas the previous councils wrestled with such questions as “What is the nature of human dignity?” the new one will most likely be addressing more practical policy options, such as “How much should we pay women to harvest their eggs for cloning?”

I hate to be the one to point this out Mr. President, but real ethics tackles tough issues, not practical policies.  Addressing ethical issues that cannot be answered by science or business is tough.  Just looking at practical policy is taking the easy way out.  Or it is something else?  Again from the NYT:

Dr. Alta Charo, an ethicist at the University of Wisconsin, said that much of the Bush council’s work “seemed more like a public debating society” and that a new commission should focus on helping the government form ethically defensible policy.

A commission of this kind, Dr. Charo said, “lets the president react judiciously to rapid and often startling changes in the scientific landscape.”

Forget about real ethics and helping Americans understand ethical issues surrounding science so they can make informed decisions regarding the policies they want.  This new council will be focused on helping the government form "defensible policy" and making sure the president can "react judiciously."  This sounds like a presidential "CYA" operation.

This is President Obama's administration.  He can run it like he wants for sure.  But I believe it is telling that he has abandoned philosophy and real ethics for practicality.

Even though I have very strong opinions on the subject, I promised myself I would not discuss health care reform on this blog simply because it is just outside my intended scope and I am not an expert.  (Not that it has stopped me before.) But I couldn't resist passing on this letter to patients from Dr. Wes.  (Thanks to Berci for finding this gem.)  It begins:

Dear Mr. and Ms. Patient,

It has come to my attention that in order for you to enjoy success as patients in the new era of health care reform, you must start working now to prevent illnesses that might befall you. Do not, under any circumstances, eat or drink too much. Fast food might as well be considered illegal. Exercise three, four, five times a day, even if it means take time off from work. It goes without saying that you should not smoke. The government has data that demonstrates how you have become fat, lazy, and a huge burden on our health care system. Your non-compliance threatens the very fiber of our economy.

The rest is just as good.  A must read!

James Symington will soon find out if you can clone a hero. This week he received five puppies, the clones of his late rescue dog, Trakr, who located the last survivor in the rubble following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York. The dogs were given to the Los Angeles-based Symington by biotech company BioArts International after he entered an essay contest in 2008 in which he explained why Trakr was worthy of cloning.

The retired Canadian police officer's first meeting with the German shepherd pups on June 14 was an emotional one, according to a statement released by BioArts International. "They're identical — down to the smallest detail," Symington said of the pups. "Few dogs are born with exceptional abilities — Trakr was one of those dogs. And if these puppies have the same attributes as Trakr, I plan on putting them in to search and rescue so they can help people the way Trakr did."

They sure are cute.  I want to make a few points here.  The first is that while this may bother you, the Catholic Church has no issue with cloning animals as long as it is done responsibly with the betterment of society in mind.  This arguably qualifies.   That being said, my second point is that just because these dogs share the same genetics as Trakr, there is absolutely no guarantee they will turn out like him.  A clone is simply a delayed twin.  As all of us know, even identical twins raised together can be polar opposites.

What I find truly interesting about this story is the scientist who led the cloning team:

The cloning took place at Sooam Biotech Research Foundation of South Korea and the procedure was led by Dr. Hwang Woo-Suk, who produced the world's first canine cloning in 2005.

You may remember Dr. Hwang Woo-Suk. He is the disgraced South Korean scientist that falsely claimed he had cloned human embryos in the now famous retracted Science paper.  (Funny how that was left out of the story.)  I suppose this is more his style considering he is not a medical doctor but a D.V.M.  (In other words he is veterinarian.  As are James Thomson, embryonic stem cell research pioneer, and Jose Cibelli, who has tinkered around with animal-human hybrid cloning.)

Left-over embryo frozen in a "concentration can." "Concentration can" is a term coined by geneticist Jerome LeJeune, who discovered the genetic cause of Down Syndrome

I found this gem of an article from the Village Voice on embryo adoption.  (Yes, that is sarcasm you read.)  Apparently, the term "embryo adoption" has some pro-choicers very worried. They are concerned about the use of the word "adoption" for the practice of couples "adopting" other parent's embryonic offspring:

Reproductive rights activists and supporters of embryonic stem cell research are watching with growing alarm. "I think it is dangerous," says Sean Tipton, spokesman for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. "It's the language of embryo adoption that helps people start equating in their minds an embryo with a child. And if you establish that legally, it becomes very important."

By important, of course, he means bad—bad for in vitro fertilization, bad for the future of embryonic stem cell research, and bad for reproductive liberty.

(Again with those that mythical "reproductive rights" that are nowhere in the US Constitution but still trump everything including religious freedom.)  Some pro-choicers even go on to say that the embryo adoption phenomenon is just a stealth anti-choice movement:

Bonnie Steinbock teaches philosophy and bioethics at SUNY Albany and has written widely on frozen embryos, abortion, and stem cell research....  She's also a member of the Ethics Committee of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. She views the embryo adoption campaign as an anti-abortion, anti–stem cell crusade.

"It's a backdoor way of making embryos seem like people," she says.

Here in lies the twisted hypocrisy so typical of those who defend abortion at all costs.  Some couples want to use their "reproductive rights" by "adopting" other couples unwanted embryos. But this might just wake up the public to the fact that embryos and fetuses are actually living human organisms which is a threat to abortion-on-demand and research on embryos.  Therefore, it is okay to disparage couples who choose "adopt" embryos and the people who facilitate the adoption as "anti-abortion" and "anti-stem cell" even though they are just exercising their "reproductive rights." 

So tossing your "left-over" embryos or donating them to research is good because it fits with the whole pro-abortion mentality.  But putting your embryos up for adoption and allowing them to finish their lives is bad because it challenges the morality of abortion-on-demand and embryo-destructive research.  No wonder "embryo adoption" has pro-choicers worried.

It is the embryo adoption advocate Sam Casey that points out the obvious.  There is a reason there are so many "left-over" embryos in the deep freeze: couples instinctively know their embryos are not just some worthless ball of cells:

[Casey] cites studies like the one published last December by Duke University, which found that patients are largely dissatisfied with their options of disposing of their embryos. Not wanting to donate them to another couple, but also uncertain about the moral implications of discarding or donating them to research, many patients are now delaying their decision by paying storage fees of as much as $750 a year. Others have simply walked away, leaving their doctors in the awkward position of having to decide what to do with them.

"People typically delay the decision, deny the decision, or run from the decision," says Casey. "But why is it such a tough decision if it's just property? It's because they really know what it is—particularly the ones who have been through in vitro fertilization and have already had children."

This is one of the many reason why the Catholic Church opposes IVF.  Because once you create life outside the womb, a whole new set of moral dilemmas arise. Couples so desperate to have a genetically related child do not consider the consequences and then are faced with issues of life and death for their "left-over" offspring.

In the UK Times Online:

A MOTHER desperate to have a second child has told how she lost her last IVF embryo when the NHS implanted it into the wrong patient.

When the other woman found out that the embryo was not hers, she aborted it.

Details of the blunder raise fresh questions about the way IVF clinics are regulated.

And how would you prevent such heart-wrenching blunders?  Do what other manufacturing plants do: improve quality control.  In other words, tag 'em:

Electronic tags to track embryos, eggs and sperm samples should be mandatory for fertility clinics to reduce the risk of IVF mix-ups, according to a fertility expert.

Gedis Grudzinskas, a consultant in infertility and gynaecology, said that the technology existed to tag samples and should be made standard best practice.

Most likely they are talking barcodes and RFID tags.  You can't tell me that IVF doesn't take human procreation and turn it into human manufacturing.  And people think the Catholic Church is crazy for opposing manufacturing children in a dish.

I have finally given in and joined Twitter.  I am MaryMeetsDolly if you would like to follow my tweets. 

I have been reluctant to join the Twitter revolution not because I have something against social networking but because of some very deep seated feelings about the words "twitter" and "tweet".  Without getting into too much detail, in my youth there was an incident involving a Tweety costume and a play about Noah's Arc (the other bird actually had feathers) and in my house growing up, "twitter" was a euphemism for a certain female body part. (I still can't say it with a straight face.)

I can't promise my tweets will be worth following, but I will certainly give it a shot.

Intelligender has a product on the market that they say can tell a woman whether she is having a boy for girl as early as 10 weeks after conception (which is really 12 weeks in OB/GYN time.)  And it is sold over the counter at your local pharmacy.

The test works by testing proteins in a woman's urine that are different depending on the sex of the fetus.  As you can imagine pro-lifers everywhere are wary and already dislike this OTC test because it will make it that much easier for a woman to abort her child if it isn't the sex she wants.  I get this sense that pro-lifers are all too ready to blame the makers of this test for any sex selection abortions that are a result of any information their product provides.  I believe this is wrong thinking.

Ethically, I don't think there is anything wrong with the test itself.  There is nothing morally wrong with finding out information about a child you are carrying.  The test is non-invasive.  It does not put the life of the fetus or mother at risk.  What is done with that information is where the moral implications lie. 

Let us put the blame for sex selection abortions in its proper place: a society that allows abortion-on-demand.  For example, from this article out of Australia:

Australian Christian Lobby managing director Jim Wallace said the product should be banned.

"That we would allow a product that would allow eugenics to be practised and started in the home is just unbelievable," he said. 

It is not the test that is "allowing eugenics."  It is the practice of abortion for any reason.  How about banning abortion instead of an over-the-counter test that does not harm the fetus in any way?  The Church is clear that there is nothing inherently wrong with prenatal testing, as long as it is not done with abortion in mind. It is the availability of abortion and the intent to use it that makes any prenatal testing immoral.

Imagine if abortion-on-demand was not legal.  Then how would we feel about this test?  I believe we would embrace it as a wonderful new technology.  As pointed out by Jennifer Parks, co-director of Loyola University Chicago's Programs in Health Care Ethics, in this CNN article:

"When a parent can visualize the sex of their baby and confirm they have that little person inside of them, it suddenly becomes real to them.  They often feel a stronger connection. So, it's not surprising parents would want this test."  [my emphasis]

The problem is not the test.  It is the society that all too easily condones abortion for any reason and the women who would abort a child just because of their sex.  A society so schizophrenic that Jennifer Parks, an ethicist, can utter this statement after the one above:

"Say a woman has three daughters and wants to get pregnant one last time to have a baby boy. If she takes the test at 10 weeks, and it's not the sex she wants, she may want to terminate and try again," Parks said.

"Not everyone in America is rabidly pro-choice, or rapidly pro-life; a lot of Americans kind of hang out right in the middle," she added. "At 10 weeks, most Americans see it as the earliest embryo, very different than a more developed fetus." [my emphasis]

"Baby" and "person" used when discussing loving parents finding out the sex of their wanted child.  "Embryo" and "fetus" used when discussing a mother who would abort her child for being the wrong sex.

This is the disconnect that is the real problem.  As long as abortion-on-demand is the law of the land, ANY test that gives us a glimpse into the womb is a threat to the life that resides there.

Hat Tip: Suzy B

David Horsey captures how I am feeling today (that would be the bottom panel)...

Whether or not a human embryo, either in vivo or in vitro, has value and should have rights and protections under the law, and to what extent, is an argument worth having.  Arguing about the fact that a human embryo is a new human life is just a waste of everyone's time.

It is unfortunate that I even have to point this out.  I once spoke to a woman with a biology degree who swore up and down that there was no evidence than an embryo was a living human being.  (I asked her why scientists study embryo death if embryos are not living beings.)  She was adamant that her embryology book in no way shape or form said that life begins at conception.

I was going to do some investigating, but Jivin J did some of the work for me already.  Here are some quotes from various embryology books:

"Almost all higher animals start their lives from a single cell, the fertilized ovum (zygote). ... The time of fertilization represents the starting point in the life history, or ontogeny, of the individual." (Carlson, Bruce M., Patten's Foundations of Embryology, 6th edition. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996, p.3.)

"The development of a human being begins with fertilization, a process by which two highly specialized cells, the spermatozoon from the male and the oocyte from the female, unite to give rise to a new organism, the zygote."  (Langman, Jan. Medical Embryology. 3rd edition. Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, 1975, p. 3)

"Zygote. This cell, formed by the union of an ovum and a sperm (Gr. zygtos, yoked together), represents the beginning of a human being."  (Moore, Keith L. and Persaud, T.V.N. Before We Are Born: Essentials of Embryology and Birth Defects. 4th edition. Philadelphia: W.B. Saunders Company, 1993, p. 1)

"Although human life is a continuous process, fertilization is a critical landmark because, under ordinary circumstances, a new, genetically distinct human organism is thereby formed. ... The combination of 23 chromosomes present in each pronucleus results in 46 chromosomes in the zygote. Thus the diploid number is restored and the embryonic genome is formed. The embryo now exists as a genetic unity."  (O'Rahilly, Ronan and Müller, Fabiola. Human Embryology and Teratology, 2nd edition. New York: Wiley-Liss, 1996, pp. 8, 29).

"Fertilization is a sequence of events that begins with the contact of a sperm (spermatozoon) with a secondary oocyte (ovum) and ends with the fusion of their pronuclei (the haploid nuclei of the sperm and ovum) and the mingling of their chromosomes to form a new cell. This fertilized ovum, known as a zygote, is a large diploid cell that is the beginning, or primordium, of a human being."  (Moore, Keith L. Essentials of Human Embryology. Toronto: B.C. Decker Inc, 1988, p.2)

"Embryo: An organism in the earliest stage of development; in a man, from the time of conception to the end of the second month in the uterus."  (Dox, Ida G. et al. The Harper Collins Illustrated Medical Dictionary. New York: Harper Perennial, 1993, p. 146)

"every time a sperm cell and ovum unite, a new being is created which is alive and will continue to live unless its death is brought about by some specific condition."  (E.L. Potter, M.D., and J.M. Craig, M.D. Pathology of the Fetus and the Infant (3rd Edition). Chicago: Year Book Medical Publishers, 1975, page vii.)

“Can you un-ban cloning so I can clone myself, and is the moon a part of the United States?"

Well Steven, I don't know about the moon, but President Obama cannot un-ban cloning, because cloning is not banned in the United States.  This is a common misconception among Americans.  They just assume our lawmakers would be smart enough to ban human cloning and that they have already done it.  Actually, the United States is woefully behind on regulating such issues of reproductive technologies.  I hate to keep pounding this in, but I think it is important.  Here again is my chart I complied from BioPolicyWiki.

But today I am going to draw a line in the sand and take a bold and courageous stand. The stand I have decided to take is: This has to stop! And by "this" I am referring to the current worldwide trend in which scientists take genetic material from one animal and stick it into another animal because -- and you will have already seen this coming -- it gives the second animal the ability to glow in the dark.

You will think I am kidding about this major scientific trend, but, sadly, I am not. I first became aware of it about three years ago when I wrote an insightful column announcing that Canada had lost the race to develop the world's first glow-in-the-dark pig.

In that case, Taiwanese researchers extracted genetic material from jellyfish and injected it into pig embryos, thereby genetically engineering pigs that glow fluorescent green in the dark.

Why did they do this? Well, at the time, the Taiwanese scientists said green porkers represent a breakthrough in the study of human diseases. Sounds reasonable, eh?

First scientist: "Look, I made a pig that glows in the dark!"

Second scientist: "Why?"

First scientist: "Ummm...."

Second scientist: "If anyone asks, just say it will help cure human diseases."

Glow-in-the-dark pigs are one thing.  Pigs are research animals whose cardiovascular and digestive systems are similar to humans.  But why glow-in-the-dark dogs?:

Since these pigs were first unveiled, scientists have come up with an entire Noah's Ark of glow-in-the-dark critters, including mice, cats and monkeys.

But the final straw came last week when I read an Associated Press article sporting the alarming headline: South Korean Scientists Clone Glowing Dogs.

...what they created is a litter of four baby beagles that glow red under ultraviolet light. Is that a wonderful scientific development, or what? Here's a hint: NO IT IS NOT!

No one sits around thinking: "Gee, I'd really like to buy a beagle puppy for the kids, but they don't glow in the dark, so I think I'll get them flashlights instead!"

If we are going to give beagles a new quality, why the heck would it be the ability to glow in the dark? As a dog lover, I think it would be better to give beagles the quality of not being mindless, shoe-eating, incessantly barking, potentially satanic lunatics.

Doug's point in one sentence:

Seriously, glow-in-the-dark beagles are NOT going to make the world a better place in which to live.

Amen!

From the London Evening Standard:

Lesbian Kelly Guarina paid £505 for IVF treatment, which usually costs £4,500, after sharing her eggs

Fertility clinics are to target lesbians as egg donors after research found they were more likely than heterosexual women to give birth after IVF....

Researchers believe the difference between lesbian and straight women arises because most gay women seek treatment for lifestyle reasons, and not because they have fertility problems.

Conversely, most straight women seek IVF because they have problems conceiving.

Dr Kamal Ahuja, its scientific director, said: "These results are remarkable. This is the first indication that the quality of eggs for lesbian women is better.

"It's also a remarkable turnaround - 10 years ago lesbian women weren't all that welcome in fertility clinics. Now that's changed. These women are going to be our saviours. This is evidence that they make excellent patients in egg-sharing schemes - both as donors and recipients."

Lesbians will be encouraged to take part in the "egg-sharing" system pioneered by the clinic.

In return for subsidised IVF, they will donate some of their eggs to an anonymous recipient. This enables both women to become pregnant, and provides an alternative to using an "altruistic" donor who does not want children of her own.

There is currently a shortage of suitable egg donors at British clinics.

As a result, an increasing number of couples are going abroad for treatment. In countries such as Spain, India and the US women can be paid for donating eggs, but this is banned in Britain.

Dr Ahuja said: "There's a huge unmet demand for donor eggs in the UK. Egg-sharing is one potential solution. This puts an end to women needing to go to countries like India...."

Kelly Guarina is pregnant for the first time after using a sperm donor.

The cleaning contractor, 30, underwent IVF at the London Women's Clinic, where she also donated eggs to two women.

Her treatment should have cost £4,500 but she paid £505 in return for sharing eggs with other patients....

Her only concern was that any children born from donated eggs are entitled to track her down when they turn 18.

The baby she is carrying will also be entitled to find the sperm donor.