Mary Meets Dolly

Wednesday, December 28. 2011

Celebrating girls

In a recent conversation, my sister-in-law commented on how many girls we have in our growing family. I have three girls, my brother has three girls and my husband's brother has three girls. I responded by saying that while boys are great too, it is a good thing that we are having so many girls. With 163 million "missing" girls in Asia, which is the equivalent to the entire female population of the United States, someone needs to be having girls. Lots and lots of girls.

Which is why I support the Prenatal Non-Discrimination Act or PRENDA for short. It would make aborting a girl just because she is a girl illegal in the United States. You would think that making it illegal to abort a girl just because she is a girl would be a feminist's dream. The feminists must be rallying in support of such legislation, right? They are not. They say that sex selection in the United States is non-existent. They call sex selective abortion a "trumped up bill for a trumped up problem."

That seems like the only play in the pro-abortion play book. Just pretend. First, pretend a fetus is not a living human organism. Now, pretend that sex selection does not happen in America. Except there is evidence that Asians are practicing sex-selective abortions here in the United States. A study done with data from the 2000 U.S. Census shows a clear son preference in Chinese, Koreans, and Asian Indians. The normal male to female ratio is 1.05 to 1. Researchers found that for third children where the older siblings were girls the ratio of boys to girls in these populations was an grossly unnatural 1.5 to 1. The researchers concluded that sex selection is occurring and it is likely in the prenatal stage.

Richard Miniter wrote in Forbes that a study in the San Francisco Bay Area, two clinics that service a high Asian population reported that 89% of women carrying girls aborted. Miniter also reported coercion:

And, too often, it wasn’t their choice. South-Asian women, pregnant with daughters, reported incredible pressure by in-laws and husbands to produce sons and not daughters. Husbands threatened divorce or abandonment, others struck, choked or kicked their wives in the abdomen in the hopes of preventing a daughter. One woman said that her Indian mother-in-law threatened to take poison if she could not produce a son.

So feminists opposed to PRENDA are not only opposed to protecting girls in the womb from discrimination but are also opposed to giving women legal protection against pressure from their husbands and in-laws to abort their girls.
See feminists that oppose PRENDA really do not want to protect women. They want to protect ideas instead. Ms. Magazine called PRENDA "an affront our rights to privacy, to bodily autonomy, and to mobilize in concert to create change and solidarity in our communities—based on our priorities and experiences, our visions for the future and our agency." Some feminists would rather protect the elusive and vague ideas of "experiences," "visions" and "agency" than protect actual girls from being exterminated just because they don't have a Y chromosome.

Do I think PRENDA will solve all of the sex selection abortions in America? No. Only getting rid of legalized abortion all together will do that. But it is important that the United States has laws on the books that state we will not stand for aborting girls just because they are girls. In the meantime, I, along with true feminists that support PRENDA, will continue to celebrate the birth of girls everywhere knowing they are desperately needed in today's world.

Posted by Rebecca Taylor in Abortion at 10:50 | Comments (3) | Trackbacks (0)

Tuesday, December 27. 2011

Transhumanism: the pitch and the reality

The gaming industry is into transhumanism. The idea of removing a perfectly good limb and replacing it with one that has super human abilities is the stuff of video games, for now. Deus Ex is a game about transhumanism. Part of the hype for Deus Ex was the creation of a fictitious corporation, Sarif Industries that specializes in human augmentation using artificial body parts. Here is Sarif Industries' perfect pitch for transhumanism. This is the hard sell for using technology to replace normal body parts augmenting healthy humans beyond normal human abilities:

Sounds fantastic doesn't it? Transhumanism is super seductive. And yet the reality will be far from what is depicted above. Once people begin to augment, others will feel compelled to do the same, removing perfectly good eyes, ears, limbs and replacing them just to be able to keep up. At this point transhumanism will make man a slave to the technology he creates. In the fictitious Deus Ex world, Purity First, an anti-transhumanism group shows us the reality behind Sarif Industries' pitch:

The Purity First video is in the extreme, but once we have replaced our working parts with artificial ones it is very possible that companies will have the power to turn them off or control them. Many transhumanists do not consider that artificial limbs will not work as well as promised in the long term and then the enhanced will forever be beholden to the company that made their augmentation. Even artificial intelligence may be used against the user, altering his or her conscious without consent. I envision this transhumanist utopia as man's ultimate enslavement. The above video depicts just this future.

I want to applaud the behind-the-scenes creators of these make-believe jaunts into the future of human enhancements. They really do understand what is at stake: our humanity. We can use technology to heal and fix what is broken, returning individuals to normal functioning or, we can use it to alter our nature beyond recognition. The former allows us to master technology. Choose the latter and technology will be our master.

Posted by Rebecca Taylor in Transhumanism at 09:44 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Friday, December 23. 2011

Is the U.S. backward in embryonic stem cell research?

I am beginning to believe that it is true that Americans in general have no idea about how things really are in the rest of the world. For example, I am sure that many in the "Occupy" crowd have no idea that they are among the richest people in the world. The cancellation of the first human trial with cells derived from embryonic stem cells has brought out more American cluelessness. In an article on Katie Sharify, the last patient enrolled in the now canceled Geron study, one reader commented:

"If she is looking for a partner to take over the research, she should really be looking in Europe, France in particular has made significant advancements with stem cell research. This is another example of our government being held back because of extremists. Too often ordinary citizens suffer or die when there are cures or treatment that are held up by nothing more than politics."

And there it is again. The erroneous, and unfortunately ubiquitous, idea that that the United States is sooooo far behind everyone else because we are not as "progressive" as other countries in ripping apart embryos and using them for the stem cell gold inside. If you believed everything you read on the Internet, you would think that it is an embryonic free-for-all everywhere else in the world, like France, and every country except the United States will benefit from cures and Americans will not. You could believe that, but it isn't true.

I know I have said all this before, but it is beyond important that I say it again. We Americans need to understand the truth about embryo-destructive research in America. The only restriction in the United States on research with human embryos on the federal level is funding research that destroys embryos. That means that in most states, researchers are free to create and destroy human embryos all day long for stem cells or any other reason. They can even clone human embryos. They can even clone human embryos with cow, rabbit and mouse eggs if they so choose. In reality there are no federal laws that restrict creating, destroying or cloning human embryos for research. There is only the Dickey-Wicker Amendment that prohibits federal monies from funding such research. Many people even want to get rid of that relatively tiny, but critically important, funding restriction. In other words, you can experiment on human embryos all you want in the United States, you just cannot use tax-payer dollars to fund your research if it involves embryo destruction.

Compare that to the embryonic stem cell research policy in France that was just renewed. In France, human embryonic stem cell research is banned. Read that again Mr. SF Chronicle Commenter: in France, human embryonic stem cell research is banned. French researchers can work with human embryonic stem cells if they have a special dispensation and only if the embryos are from another country and are left-over from in vitro fertilization. No embryos can be created for research. Which means cloning embryos for research is also prohibited. According to the Center for Genetics and Society's BioPolicyWiki page, France's 2004 law that guides research on embryos has the following core values:

Respect for the dignity of the human embryo

Respect for all stages of life

Human rights

What about Germany? Cutting edge Germany must have progressive laws on human embryonic stem cell research right? No again. In Germany any research on human embryos is totally prohibited. The 1990 German Act for the Protection of Embryos states:

1. Anyone who disposes of, or hands over or acquires or uses for a purpose not serving its preservation, a human embryo produced outside the body, or removed from a woman before the completion of implantation in the uterus, will be punished with imprisonment of up to three years or a fine.

2. Likewise, anyone will be punished who causes a human embryo to develop further outside the body for any purpose other than bringing about of a pregnancy.

Austria also bans embryonic stem cell research. Denmark and Italy prohibit the destruction of human embryos for embryonic stem cells but they allow for the importation of human embryonic stem cell lines from other countries. In fact here is a list of European Countries that, unlike the United States, ban the creation of human embryos for use in research: Austria, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Greece, Spain, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Luxemborg, Lativa, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romaina, Sewden, Slovenia, and Slokavia. This means all these countries have banned the cloning embryos for research, which the United States has not.

Well what about in North America? Surely Canada has more "progressive" laws than the United States? Wrong again. In Canada, embryos cannot be created for research and existing IVF embryos can only be destroyed for research if all parties involved (sperm and egg donors) have given informed consent. This means that Canada has also banned cloning human embryos for research.

See the United States is backward in its polices regarding research on human embryos, but not for the reasons may people believe. It is backward because unlike other countries it has no national policy that protects human embryos at all!

So this Christmas while we Americans are celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ in a orgy of consumerism, take a moment to reflect on our country's lack of protections for the smallest of our species. Protections afforded in other more "progressive" countries that understand that even the smallest of human lives have value.

Sources:
Center for Genetics and Society's BioPolicWiki
EuroStemCell.org
Genetics and Policy Center
World Human Cloning Policies
Canadian Institutes of Health Research

Posted by Rebecca Taylor in Stem cells, Embryonic at 11:34 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Saturday, December 17. 2011

Conscience clauses aren't just about contraception, abortion and assisted suicide

The moral conscience of health care providers is under attack. Increasingly they are being forced to provide medical services that go against their moral beliefs. Wesley J. Smith has a great piece in the Daily Caller on how laws all over the world are making it harder for medical professionals to opt out of procedures that go against their moral code. Smith focuses on Australia where where all doctors are required to perform abortions or refer to a doctor who will and The Netherlands where there is a push to require doctors to comply with requests for assisted suicide, and Washington state where pharmacists are required to dispense the morning after pill. Smith writes:

It is becoming increasingly clear that medical professionals who wish to continue in the Hippocratic tradition will face increasing pressure to yield their consciences to the desires of patients and the reigning moral cultural paradigm.

Progressives likely cheer erosions of conscience protections for health care providers because emergency contraception, abortion and assisted suicide are issues they champion. But I want to look farther into the future to see how a lack of conscience clauses will affect the medical profession.

Photograph: Getty

When cloning becomes a reality, there will be a cry to make reproductive cloning or cloning-to-produce children a reality. IVF clinics will be bombarded with requests to clone patients. Some IVF doctors are already cloning for research, they have the eggs needed and the facilities so it would be natural that they clone to make babies as well. They are in the baby-making business after all. And some people think cloning is their reproductive right:

"My decision to clone myself should not be the government's business, or Cardinal O'Conner's, anymore than a woman's decision to have an abortion is. Cloning is highly significant. Its part of the reproductive rights of every human being." --Randy Wicher, cloning activist

But what if an IVF practitioners doesn't want to clone babies? What if they find it morally repugnant? Get rid of conscience clauses and that IVF doctor has no legal right to refuse to clone whoever walks through the clinic door.

What happens in the future when transhumanism has taken hold? Transhumanism is a movement that would use technology not to cure or treat disease but to enhance otherwise healthy individuals beyond normal human abilities. Transhumanists would like nothing more than to chop off their perfectly good limb and replace it with an artificial one that performs better. They would love to have unlimited access to cognitive enhancing drugs or be able to genetically engineer themselves or their offspring.

diy.despair.com

But what if a surgeon doesn't want to amputate a healthy limb and replace it with an artificial one? What if that surgeon thinks making a healthy person into cyborg is morally wrong?

What if a pharmacist doesn't want to dispense cognitive enhancing drugs to healthy people because he or she knows the risks of such drugs? What if he or she believes cognitive enhancements for normal individuals is morally wrong?

What if doctors who perform gene therapy for muscle wasting diseases are asked to genetically alter a normal man to have an unnatural amount of muscle? What if that doctor is asked to enhance children the same way? What if he or she believes that genetically altering healthy people or children without informed consent is morally wrong?

Take away conscience protections and these medical professionals will have no choice but to comply with their patient's requests. Even if they know these procedures are dangerous and carry great risks, doctors, nurses, and pharmacists may be compelled to participate. Or if they are morally opposed to operating on healthy people, they will no longer have a choice simply because their "patient's rights" trump their right to make moral decisions.

Conscience clauses are not just about contraception, abortion and assisted suicide. Their importance is far greater than that. We must give health care providers the ability to listen to their conscience or we maybe forcing them to participate in cloning, enhancements, or whatever else biotechnology has in store. Be careful what you wish for. Those who support removing conscience protections now, may have cloning, cyborgs, genetically enhanced children and other morally repugnant technologies shoved down their throats in the future.

Posted by Rebecca Taylor in Cloning at 11:57 | Comments (3) | Trackbacks (0)

Wednesday, December 14. 2011

Is IVF really about the children?

I have heard countless times that parents that undergo in vitro fertilization (IVF) must love their children so very much to go through such an expensive and invasive process to have children. I have no doubt that parents undergoing IVF believe they are doing what is best, but looking at the realities of IVF that many parents are not aware of, one has to wonder if IVF is really about the children.

First IVF usually creates many more embryos than are needed. Lucky embryos get implanted into their mother's womb. Meanwhile others are discarded, donated to research or frozen and never get to finish their lives. Any "surplus" embryos that are frozen are filled with anti-freeze and then slowly cooled down to -196°C, where they are stored in containers of liquid nitrogen. Read that again. These "desperately loved and wanted" offspring are filled with anti-freeze and then frozen for later use.

And if these frozen embryos are eventually "wanted" by their parents, they are thawed out and implanted. But the majority of embryos (upwards of 70%) that are cryopreserved are damaged by the process. Only 30-35% of embryos thaw with no damage. 20-25% do not survive at all. Now read that again. Nearly one in four embryos that are frozen do not survive the process.

And it is not just the freezing and thawing process that can be a problem for an IVF embryo. The laboratory is not the best place to start one's life. Children conceived with IVF are are 9 times more likely to have the genetic disorder Beckwith-Wiedemann's Syndrome. Some recent studies are suggesting that people conceived with IVF have different patterns of gene expression that those conceived naturally and so are at greater risk for major disease like obesity and diabetes later in life. And it is estimated that 90% of IVF embryos have chromosomal abnormalities. Think about that statistic this way, IVF practitioners are creating human lives knowing that the majority will have major genetic problems and likely will not survive.

And even if everything goes well, an IVF embryo could still encounter trouble. Increasingly they are sent overseas by Fed Ex (and held by customs) to be implanted and gestated by a woman the parents have never met and cared for by a doctor a half a world away.

Or an embryo maybe implanted into the wrong uterus and then summarily aborted. Or sold over the Internet.

Or embryos can even be lost by the IVF clinic. A recent story of an IVF clinic in the UK "misplacing" a couple's embryos reminds us of the peril that IVF embryos face everyday:

A fertility clinic in Kent is under investigation after reports that staff may have lost a woman's embryos. Mrs Alison Austin-Hennessy said she and her husband Michael were informed by a consultant at the private Chaucer Hospital that their embryos had been misplaced....

Chaucer Hospital is run by BMI Healthcare and, according to the Daily Mail, an audit in March 2009 found that two embryos present in 2007 were now 'gone'. The couple said they were not informed of this, however....

'I was physically sick. For two or three days, I was ringing them up because I just expected them to be found', said Mrs Austin-Hennessy.

In an interview with People magazine, Mrs Austin-Hennessy, who is 31 years old, said that she saw a note on the file that read 'thawed', leading her to believe that the embryos may have been implanted in another woman.

'It's heartbreaking to think another woman may be carrying - or have had - our biological child', she said.

Increased risk of genetic problems, damage from being injected with anti-freeze and frozen, being lost or implanted into the wrong woman, sold over the Internet, discarded or donated to be destroyed in research. Is this treatment really what is "best" for our children? Is this how we treat our offspring and then call it love? With IVF on the rise, apparently so.

Posted by Rebecca Taylor in IVF at 10:10 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)

Friday, December 9. 2011

A Special Mother is Born: great new pro life book

Leticia Velasquez had done the world a great service with her new book A Special Mother is Born. It is a compilation of stories from mothers (and a few dads) of special needs children. The overwhelming theme is that, while challenging, these children are far from hopelessly devastating as our culture of death imagines them to be. Instead they are truly gifts to be cherished. In this book, that is not simply a cliche. Each story relates a tale of how these children bring out the best in everyone around them. How fear and self doubt is replaced with love and hope and strength and most importantly faith. And it really does not take a special mother to have a special needs child. We are all able to answer the call and be enriched by the experience of embracing those with special needs. As Leticia says:

God does not choose the equipped, but rather He equips the chosen.

Leticia, a mother of Christina who has Down Syndrome, relates what she said after it was clear in the delivery room that Christina had Downs:

So on my way to my room, the nurses circled my gurney and said coldly, "We regret to tell you that this child has symptoms consistent with Down Syndrome."

I was ready with my response. "This child will never take drugs, go Goth, or shoot up a classroom. She'll learn the Faith and keep it her whole life. She's my best chance at getting a daughter to Heaven, and I consider her a special blessing from God." My answer came from a book Pregnancy Diary, by Mary Arnold, which I had read regularly for inspiration.

People from all walks of life can find such inspiration in this book as well. The people I think that most need it are medical professionals. It seems that in every story the medical community is guilty of a dereliction of duty. In a disturbing undercurrent, the book chronicles mistreatment of parents and children by doctors, nurses and genetic counselors. These so called professionals have pressured women into aborting their special needs children and have neglected these children if they were lucky enough to make it out of the womb. I have one thing to say to prenatal and postnatal medical professionals. You should be ashamed of yourselves and what your profession has become: a pusher of discrimination and death. It is time to leave death behind and embrace life. As this book clearly shows, it will make you a better person.

I love this quote from mother Christina Bogdan about our responsibility to spread the word about children with special needs:

With a 92% abortion rate for babies diagnosed with Down syndrome, and new specialized testing available to test even earlier in the pregnancy, I know now that God has a task for all of us: to tell the world what a blessing children with Down syndrome are. All life that God has created is sacred, and it is our job to bring the truth to everyone who crosses our path.

A Special Mother is Born does just that. It is the perfect Christmas gift for anyone with a special needs child or parents who are expecting. It is also perfect for the rest of us who have no experience of the challenges that these families face. The stories are so full of strength, hope and faith, I even recommended it to a friend who recently lost her child. But I would especially recommend it for the medical professional in your life who thinks death is the answer for children with special needs. I truly believe this book will open the eyes of anyone who is lucky enough to read it. You can purchase your copy of A Special Mother is Born here.

Posted by Rebecca Taylor in Pro-life at 13:20 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)

Wednesday, December 7. 2011

More great Catholic fiction in Childless

Brian J. Gail speaks my language. Childless, the third in his American Tragedy in Trilogy, is about, among other things, transhumanism. The last installment of his distinctly Catholic series, is, in my opinion, the best read of the three.

Gail focuses Childless on the coming trials that mankind will have to face before the second coming of Christ. We are all very familiar with the specter of persecution of Catholics at the hands of the state and Gail explores this theme to its bloody conclusion. But Gail also has the wisdom to include transhumanism in his novel. The rich and powerful are not satisfied with natural man and his limitations. They pour billions into research that will create a "posthuman." A human made not in God's image, but in man's arrogant, selfish, and shortsighted image. Gail writes:

He strode purposefully to the podium and settled in behind it. “Genesis 1: God creates man in His image and likeness.” He paused dramatically and swept the room with an undisguised air of triumph. “Genesis 2: Man creates man in his own image and likeness.”

I don't want to give too much away but that as transhumanists succeed creating their Homo Evolutis and a time of great death and destruction falls on the earth. This is always the way I have viewed transhumanism. This movement to use technology not to help the sick or injured but to transform man into the "trans" or "post" human is the ultimate affront to our nature. An affront to God's design and ultimately, his image and likeness. Transhumanism is a philosophy that cannot end in anything but human suffering and despair just the eugenics movement, where transhumanism has its origins, ended in the Holocaust in Nazi Germany. A point another great writer you made have heard of, Dean Koontz, makes in the introduction to his series Frankenstein:

"We live in hubristic age, when politicians imagine themselves to be messiahs and when many in the sciences frankly discuss their dreams of creating a “post-human” civilization of genetically engineered supermen, ignorant of the fact that like minds have often come before them and have left no legacy but death, destruction, and despair."

Childless is ultimately a cautionary tale about how the errors of the last 50 years will eventually engulf mankind. I highly recommend the entire trilogy for its depiction of the Church as a stronghold of Truth in a sea of relativism that threatens the fabric of our society. From abortion to contraception to transhumanism, Gail touches on them all. If nothing else Childless will certainly inspire you to get on your knees and pray.

Posted by Rebecca Taylor in Transhumanism at 15:18 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Monday, December 5. 2011

Feminists warn of exploitation of women for cloning research

Human Oocyte, a hot commodity for cloning researchers

There is a dirty little secret behind cloning to obtain stem cells that no supporter ever wants to talk about. If they do even acknowledge the secret it is quickly dismissed as a non-issue. In reality, this secret is a rallying cry against cloning research for BOTH sides of the embryonic stem cell debates. Which is probably exactly why supporters of therapeutic cloning (cloning to produce stem cells) refuse to bring it to light.

The secret is this: somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT,) better known as cloning, requires an enormous amount of eggs. Human eggs, retrieved from young human females. Your niece, your daughter, your granddaughter. And the procedure to get these eggs necessary for cloning is no walk in the park.

To retrieve the enormous amount of eggs needed for SCNT, many women have to undergo a difficult and dangerous procedure. First they are injected with drugs that stimulate their ovaries to produce multiple eggs. This is called ovarian hyperstimulation. The women then undergo surgery to retrieve the eggs produced. Depending on which drugs are used, as many as 10% of women will experience ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome (OHSS), a serious complication that includes enlargement of the ovaries and can cause permanent infertility and even death. OHSS may also cause blood clotting disorders and kidney damage. Women who have undergone ovarian hyperstimulation may have increased risk of ovarian cancer. The horror stories of the medical problems experienced by women who donated their eggs are numerous. (Three are documented in the following video from the film Eggsploitation.)

So support for cloning research is a de facto support for putting young women's health and lives at risk. This is the reality that supporters of cloning for stem cells don't want you to know about.

But some feminists are speaking out. They realize that simply pursing this research puts vulnerable women at risk and if it is successful it will create an even more intense market for human eggs. Three "pro-choice" feminists have written a letter to the editors of Nature in response to an article on cloning research. Here is the letter in its entirety:

The demand for women’s eggs for research could soar alarmingly following news of a cloning technique that uses human oocytes to reprogram somatic cells to a state of pluripotency (S. Noggle et al. Nature 478, 70–75; 2011).

The mean number of eggs given by each woman during the study was 16.9, with one donating 26 eggs. This is more than many fertility doctors would consider optimal and increases the risk of ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome. The researchers do not say that they halted hormone treatment in cases of over-response, although they did stop it in under-responsive women.

Noggle et al. rightly anticipated concerns that payment for eggs could encourage financially disadvantaged women to take risks they might otherwise avoid. But US$8,000, the amount paid by Noggle and colleagues, would be a temptation even to the well-off in these difficult economic times.

Some argue that women should evaluate for themselves the risks and benefits of providing eggs for research. But informed consent depends on provision of accurate information. Even after years of egg harvesting for fertility treatment, the risks to women — especially from some of the drugs and hormones used — remain undercharacterized and poorly assessed, with inadequate follow-up and data collection.

Marcy Darnovsky, Center for Genetics and Society, Berkeley, California, USA.
Susan Berke Fogel, Pro-Choice Alliance for Responsible Research, Van Nuys, California, USA.
Judy Norsigian, Our Bodies Ourselves, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA.

Posted by Rebecca Taylor in Cloning at 13:11 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Scientists say work smarter not harder in stem cell research

Dr. Peter Hollands is a researcher at the University of Westminster in London and he attended the Vatican sponsored conference on stem cell research held in November. He gave an interview with the National Catholic Reporter where he illustrated the practical reasons everyone can oppose embryonic stem cell research. In essence, the old adage, "Work smarter, not harder." Hollands responds to the NCR's question on why researchers want to work with embryonic stem cells:

I don’t know if there’s anything to learn from embryonic stem cells, but it’s the objections to their use [that’s the problem].

We could grow potatoes on the moon; we could send up water, soil and seeds. We could set it up, grow potatoes, and it would work. But why do that when you’ve got something which is so much easier, and you’re able to grow them in a field?

That’s the difference between adult and embryonic — the technology is already there.

That sentiment was echoed by none other than Ian Wilmut, one of the scientists that sparked this frenzy when he cloned Dolly the sheep, the first mammal cloned from an adult cell. At a recent conference on stem cell research in California, he urged researchers to shift away from embryonic stem cells and work with direct programming, a technique that directly converts one adult cell type to another skipping the pluripotent (embryonic-like) stage. It is the pluripotent nature of stem cells that causes them to become tumors so taking one fully differentiated cell like a skin cell and turning it directly into another like a nerve cell bypasses the dangerous aspects of pluripotency. Embryonic stem cells are pluripotent by nature. The North County Times reports:

Newer and safer forms of stem cell therapy will likely overtake research into the use of human embryonic stem cells, the scientist whose team cloned Dolly the sheep told his peers at a stem cell conference in La Jolla.

Direct "reprogramming" of adult cells into the type needed for therapy is gradually becoming a reality, Ian Wilmut told an audience of several hundred at the Salk Institute at the annual Stem Cell Meeting on the Mesa. Such a feat was once thought impossible, but in recent years it has been demonstrated in at least two publications, he said.

These reprogrammed cells appear likely to provide the anticipated benefits of embryonic stem cells without their risks, such as forming tumors....

The emergence of direct reprogramming provides a promising new option scientists should consider, Wilmut said.

"I'm not quite sure why this hasn't been pursued more actively," Wilmut said.

Add in the abandonment by Geron of one of the scant 2 human trials with embryonic-derived cells and one would think that you could hear the death knells of embryo destructive research. And yet the cries for funds to destroy human lives for their pluripotent stem cells continues. If it were really about cures, by now everyone should see that growing potatoes on the moon is a ridiculous notion when we have perfectly good fields right here on earth.

Posted by Rebecca Taylor in Stem cells, Adult at 10:35 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

Friday, December 2. 2011

Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act is a step

The Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act reintroduced recently to the U.S. Congress by Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ) is a step in the right direction. But it is only a step. The Prenatal Nondiscrimination Act, called PRENDA for short, would punish medical providers that perform abortions or accept funds for abortions when the reason for the abortion is the gender or race of the fetus.

Franks is responding to a growing trend of sex selective abortions around the world where girls are being aborted in the millions just because they are female. He is also responding to the the fact that minority babies in the United States are being aborted at five times the rate of white babies.

It is a good idea. But if passed will PRENDA actually save the lives of girls and minorities? I doubt it. Knowing Planned Parenthood's penchant for skirting the mandatory reporting laws, I am sure they will go on ahead killing babies for any reason regardless of what the law says.

Many other countries also have laws against sex selective abortions. Believe it or not sex selective abortion is illegal in India. It is even illegal to find out the sex of a fetus. But it hasn't helped. Sex selection in India is as alive and prominent as ever prompting some places to pay parents to have girls.

Laws that punish abortion providers for killing because of gender or race are nice and they are a step in the right direction but they will not stop sex or race based abortions. The ONLY way to do that is to ban abortions all together. Protect girls and minorities in the womb by protecting ALL life in the womb. It truly is the only way.

Abortion is evil and we cannot put limits to or control its devastating effects. We cannot dance with evil, expecting to confine it to a nice waltz, and then wonder why we are suddenly being trampled in a crushing mosh pit.

And thankfully Franks knows that his PRENDA legislation is only a step. He is quoted in The Daily Caller:

“People will say I have a greater agenda — and they are right — I hope for a day when all children, regardless of race or color, all children because they are children will be protected,” he said.

“But right now regardless of what the long term impact of this might be the short term impact is very simple: Can we not agree that aborting a child based on a child’s race or sex is wrong?”

I look forward to day we can all agree that aborting ANY child is wrong.

Posted by Rebecca Taylor in Abortion at 13:49 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0)

More cloning in South Korea

Korean scientists are at it again. Professor Park Se-pill at Jeju National University is attempting to clone human embryos after the disgrace of his fellow countryman Hwang Woo-Suk. Hwang claimed he was the first to clone human embryos and destroy them from their stem cells. This claim was revealed to be false but not before Hwang enjoyed enormous celebrity status including a nod on an official postage stamp depicting a paralyzed patient getting up and walking again.

Cloning embryos to get patient-specific embryonic stem cells (stem cells genetically identical to the patient) has been a dismal failure. In the meantime researchers have put young women's reproductive health and even their lives at risk to retrieve the hundreds of human eggs need for even one attempt at cloning a human embryo. Even Hwang lied about how many eggs it took in his attempts at cloning. He claimed he improved the process and needed less eggs. In reality, Hwang blew through many as 2,000 eggs from as many as 120 women in his failed attempt to become the first to clone a human embryo. Some of those eggs came from 2 junior researchers in Hwang's own lab.

This commodification of women's bodies by cloning researchers is totally unnecessary because scientists can create patient-specific embryonic-like stem cells without cloning and without eggs. These cells are called induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and some are calling them the new super model in biological research. Instead of cloning a human embryo and destroying him or her for the stem cells inside, scientists take a cell from the patient and reprogram it back to an embryonic-like state. No human organisms created and destroyed, no eggs needed and no specter of using the technology for reproductive cloning (cloning to produce children) in the future.

And yet Park Se-pill is still trying to clone human embryos. And he says he will do it before 2015. From The Korea Times:

Professor Park Se-pill at Jeju National University is striving to clone human embryonic stem cells by 2015, the much-touted breakthrough that no scientists have ever achieved.

The embryologist plans to start cloning human embryos and establishing stem cell batches from them beginning next year.

“Recently, the government approved Cheju National University as eligible to conduct human embryonic studies. We now need to get separate okays for specific research projects,” Park said.

“We will be able to start the work on human embryonic stem cells next year with the aim of finishing them by 2015. It will be tough as nobody has achieved it yet but we will do our best.”

What Park is trying to do is exactly the same as what Hwang Woo-suk, a former professor at Seoul National University, claimed to have done — though the purported feat later proved to be false.

Hwang stole the spotlight in the mid 2000s when two papers on the human embryonic stem cells were published as cover-story articles by the U.S. journal Science.

The exploits were expected to bring possible treatments for degenerative diseases such as diabetes but his work was found to be based on fabricated data and his team actually did not extract stem cells from the cloned human embryos.

“In fact, things are much difficult now compared to when Hwang carried out his research because we are now not allowed to use fresh eggs to duplicate embryos,” Park said.

“Instead, we have to depend on frozen eggs so that the success rate will be very low as amply demonstrated in animal experiments. We need to fix this problem.”

Hwang's exploitation of women in his quest for cloning made South Korean outlaw the use of fresh eggs for these experiments so at least this time Se-pill cannot exploit young women just for his attempts.

But what if he successful? What then? Will the ban on using fresh eggs in his country stand? Will the frenzy that surrounded Hwang the first time mean an end to these protections for women against exploitation for cloning research?

And what will it mean for young women worldwide? Will a cloning boom mean an even more intense market for human eggs? Will it mean more poor women putting their fertility and lives at risk to satisfy the insatiable appetite of cloners?

I am certain it will. And for what? Stem cells we can get through other means. Thus proving what I have believed all along. Cloning for stem cells is not about stem cells nor treating patients. It is about creating human clones plain and simple. Just because we can. I love this quote from former President George W. Bush:

"Anything other than a total ban on human cloning would be virtually impossible to enforce. Cloned human embryos created for research would be widely available in laboratories and embryo farms. Once cloned embryos were available, implantation would take place. Even the tightest regulations and strict policing would not prevent or detect the birth of cloned babies."

Posted by Rebecca Taylor in Cloning at 10:12 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

(Page 1 of 1, totaling 11 entries)