The movement of late that concerns me the most is radical environmentalism. It is not the zealous concern for the environment that disturbs me; it is the humans vs. the planet mentality that is sometimes hidden behind that concern for the environment.
James Lee, killed holding the Discovery Channel hostage, was a true believer in the misanthropic radical environmentalist agenda. He demands of the Discovery channel reveal a hatred for his fellow man, namely children, disguised by a concern for the environment. From MSNBC.com:
[Lee] is reputed to be behind the website, SaveThePlanetProtest.com, essentially a one-page screed against Discovery, urging the company to expose civilization "for the filth it is" and to puts its focus on "how people can live WITHOUT giving birth to more filthy human children since those new additions continue pollution and are pollution...."
The SaveThePlanetProtest website list of "demands" is prefaced by this statement: "The Discovery Channel MUST broadcast to the world their commitment to save the planet and to do the following IMMEDIATELY."
Among the chilling demands: "All programs on Discovery Health-TLC must stop encouraging the birth of any more parasitic human infants and the false heroics behind those actions.
"In those programs' places, programs encouraging human sterilization and infertility must be pushed. All former pro-birth programs must now push in the direction of stopping human birth, not encouraging it."
I think "parasitic human infants" says it all.
Lee was certainly a crazy man to take innocent hostages, but I do not think his sentiment is all that unique. I believe a milder form of his misanthropy exists among more mainstream environmentalists.
Recall a study published recently that found that those identifying themselves as "green" were more likely to more likely to steal and less likely to be kind. The authors of the study were surprised. I was not. It makes sense that people who embrace the "green" movement also believe that humans are a blight on the planet. If in their minds we are THE problem, it makes sense that such people would engage in misanthropic behavior. They are good to the planet and so do not have to be good to their fellow man who is screwing it up.
In other words its the "Green" Golden Rule: Do unto to your neighbor what you believe they are doing to the planet.
This misanthropy hiding behind environmentalism is as disturbing as it is unnecessary. We can take care of the planet without calling for the end of the human race. We can look at protecting the environment as a way to better creation AND humanity at the same time. Pope Benedict IX said in his message for the World Day of Peace:
Respect for creation is of immense consequence, not least because “creation is the beginning and the foundation of all God’s works”, and its preservation has now become essential for the pacific coexistence of mankind. Man’s inhumanity to man has given rise to numerous threats to peace and to authentic and integral human development – wars, international and regional conflicts, acts of terrorism, and violations of human rights. Yet no less troubling are the threats arising from the neglect – if not downright misuse – of the earth and the natural goods that God has given us. For this reason, it is imperative that mankind renew and strengthen “that covenant between human beings and the environment, which should mirror the creative love of God, from whom we come and towards whom we are journeying...”
A greater sense of intergenerational solidarity is urgently needed. Future generations cannot be saddled with the cost of our use of common environmental resources. “We have inherited from past generations, and we have benefited from the work of our contemporaries; for this reason we have obligations towards all, and we cannot refuse to interest ourselves in those who will come after us, to enlarge the human family. Universal solidarity represents a benefit as well as a duty. This is a responsibility that present generations have towards those of the future, a responsibility that also concerns individual States and the international community”. Natural resources should be used in such a way that immediate benefits do not have a negative impact on living creatures, human and not, present and future; that the protection of private property does not conflict with the universal destination of goods; that human activity does not compromise the fruitfulness of the earth, for the benefit of people now and in the future. [my emphasis]
As a Catholic, I am morally opposed to all research on human embryos. Of course not all Americans agree. Some think ripping open tiny members of our species for parts is morally acceptable. To those, I have issued this challenge before and in the wake of the US Court ruling placing a temporary injunction on the use of tax payer money to fund embryonic stem cell research, I will issue it again:
There is no federal ban on research on human embryos. It is legal to conduct therapeutic cloning in most states. Companies and universities are free to create and destroy human embryos all day long. I wish that was not the case, but it is.
If you believe the hype that embryonic stem research is going to save lives and want to support embryo-destructive research, then reach for your checkbook and write a check. You are free to do so. I am sure lots of universities and private companies working with embryonic stem cells would be prefer to receive your donation than have to apply to the federal government for funds. Your donation may even be tax deductible.
I have been told that I need to respect the opinion that human embryos are just a mere clump of cells and full of promise for cures. Well, respect is a two way street. If you want embryonic stem cell research, then you pay for it.
Don't make me, and millions of people like me who find research that relies on the destruction of human embryos morally reprehensible, support it with our tax dollars. When you do, you are forcing your belief that a human embryo has no value on me.
President George W. Bush was the first President to fund embryonic stem cell (ESC) research with federal dollars. To use tax payer money for such research, Bush put a restriction in place that stated that funds would only be available for embryonic stem cell lines created before August of 2001. This way funds could go to embryonic stem cell research without encouraging the destruction of more human embryos which is a necessary part of deriving an embryonic stem cell line.
Bush was attempting to fund the research without being in violation of the Dickey-Wicker Amendment, signed into law by President Clinton, which states that federal dollars cannot go to the destruction of human embryos. The Dickey-Wicker Amendment, as I have stated before, is a very important piece of legislation that stands in the way of American tax dollars being used for the creation and destruction of human embryos solely for research purposes. The Dickey-Wicker Amendment states:
SEC. 509. (a) None of the funds made available in this Act may be used for--
(1) the creation of a human embryo or embryos for research purposes; or (2) research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death greater than that allowed for research on fetuses in utero under 45 CFR 46.208(a)(2) and Section 498(b) of the Public Health Service Act [1](42 U.S.C. 289g(b)) (Title 42, Section 289g(b), United States Code).
(b) For purposes of this section, the term "human embryo or embryos" includes any organism, not protected as a human subject under 45 CFR 46 (the Human Subject Protection regulations) . . . that is derived by fertilization, parthenogenesis, cloning, or any other means from one or more human gametes (sperm or egg) or human diploid cells (cells that have two sets of chromosomes, such as somatic cells).
In 2009 the Obama administration, by Executive Order, removed the funding restrictions on embryonic stem cell research put in place by President Bush. Our tax dollars cannot go to the actual destruction of human embryos, but Obama's policy creates an incentive for said destruction by paying for research on newly created ESC lines....from freshly destroyed embryos.
Chief Judge Royce C. Lamberth of Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, today wrote a temporary injunction against Obama's funding rules saying that they are in violation of the Dickey-Wicker Amendment. From the New York Times:
The judge ruled that the Obama administration’s policy was illegal because the administration’s distinction between work that leads to the destruction of embryos — which cannot be financed by the federal government under the current policy — and the financing of work using stem cells created through embryonic destruction was meaningless. In his ruling, he referred to embryonic stem cell research as E.S.C.
“If one step or ‘piece of research’ of an E.S.C. research project results in the destruction of an embryo, the entire project is precluded from receiving federal funding,” wrote Judge Lamberth, who was appointed to the federal bench in 1987 by President Ronald Reagan.
In other words, the neat lines that the government had drawn between the process of embryonic destruction and the results of that destruction are not valid, the judge ruled....
The Obama administration said that its rules abided by the Dickey-Wicker Amendment because the federal money would be used only once the embryonic stem cells were created but would not finance the process by which embryos were destroyed. The judge disagreed, writing that embryonic stem cell research “necessarily depends upon the destruction of a human embryo.”
Judge Lamberth is correct, funding an embryonic stem cell line that is created by necessarily destroying a human embryo is by default funding the destruction of that embryo.
Tomorrow there will be new calls to repeal Dickey-Wicker. But without the Dickey-Wicker Amendment our tax dollars would surely go to cloning and destroying human embryos for research. It is the last defense against a taxed funded Brave New World.
Keep your eye (and your prayers) on this one! I'll make sure to let you know when it is time to contact your representative and urge them to uphold the Dickey-Wicker Amendment
How many times I have the read the line in the media that "embryonic stem cells hold more promise than adult stem cells" and have asked myself, "How can they know that?" Just because embryonic stem cells become every cell in the body inside a growing embryo, does not mean they can and will become every cell type in a lab. And even if scientists had already made all 200 cell types in the lab from embryonic stem cells (which they haven't), ESCs still have never been used to treat a single patient. Looking at the overwhelming clinical facts, it is adult stem cells that have more promise.
But that doesn't stop our elected representatives from trying to permanently ram the funding embryonic stem cell research down our throats by introducing legislation. Rep Diana DeGette is the worst offender. She and others have introduced HR 4808 which would turn the federal funding of embryonic stem cell research into law so that no future President can defund it.
Rep. DeGette is a true believer in ESC research, but once again, I have no idea why. I am not sure she does either. In the American Thinker today, Gene Tarne and David Prentice point out this very fact:
At that same hearing, Rep. Diana DeGette commented that "I know that these wonderful patients who are here today who have been cured by adult stem cells, mostly for blood-related diseases, would never say that somebody with diabetes or somebody with Parkinson's or somebody with nerve damage or somebody with macular degeneration -- all diseases for which embryonic stem cell research has shown promise and adult stem cells have shown no clinical promise -- no one would say those people should not be cured..."
She was zero for four. Rep. DeGette seemed embarrassingly unaware of the year-old JAMA study showing adult stem cells' efficacy for juvenile diabetes patients -- and Rep. DeGette is co-chair of the Congressional Diabetes Caucus.
Parkinson's? In 2004, both Dr. Michel Levesque and Dennis Turner, a Parkinson's patient Levesque treated with Turner's own adult stem cells, testified regarding the positive results of the treatment. Leveque subsequently published his findings in the peer-reviewed Bentham Open Stem Cell Journal.
Nerve damage? Published studies using adult stem cells to treat spinal cord injuries include a 2006 report by Portugal's Dr. Carlos Lima in collaboration with Dr. Jean Peduzzi-Nelson of Wayne State University. They published a second report in 2009 using adult stem cells to treat more spinal cord injured patients.
Macular degeneration? Far from showing "no clinical promise," University of Louisville researchers have announced plans for a human trial of adult stem cells for macular degeneration. Rep. DeGette also seemed completely oblivious to the fact that the patient who testified was treated with his own adult stem cells for heart damage, not a "blood-related disease."
In their must-read-the-whole-thing piece, Tarne and Prentice point out other lawmakers who really do not know which end is up when it comes to stem cell science and yet still feel compelled to tell us what we need to fund. My favorite is this gem from Tom Harkin:
In 2007, Sen. Tom Harkin waved away evidence for adult stem cells, saying, "Scientists have known about adult stem cells for forty years, and they still haven't provided the answer for juvenile diabetes." He said this on the very day that the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published clinical trial results using adult stem cells in a treatment that reversed juvenile diabetes in patients.
Oh the irony. But this is par for the course in Washington these days. If you say it enough times somehow it just has to be true. But what DeGette and Harkin and others like them do not realize is that while they argue that those against embryo destructive research are politically and not scientifically motivated, it is really they who are ignoring the science and pushing a political agenda.
Sometimes I marvel at the lengths humans go to delude ourselves. For years I have pointed out one very unusual phenomenon regarding cloning. All over the world, consuming products from cloned animals or their offspring is bad, while creating human clones for stem cells to inject into human patients is good. Cloned animals and cloned humans are both made with the process somatic cell nuclear transfer or SCNT. Both are genetically modified organisms, but eating cloned animal products is considered "yucky" while the idea of injecting cloned human cells directly into our bodies is "laudable." I just do not get it.
Now I am not advocating eating cloned animal products, just pointing out the strange love-hate relationship we have with cloning. But, as I have said before, if it came down to drinking milk from a cloned cow or injecting myself with cells from a dead cloned embryo, I say, "Please pass the Oreos."
Britain is particularly puzzling. This New York Times article points out the Brits uneasiness with cloned animals or their offspring getting into the food supply, meanwhile they are funding the creation of cloned human-animal hybrids with the intent to create stem cells. From the NYT:
ALBRIGHTON, England — Many Europeans recoil at the very idea of cloning animals. But a handful of breeders in Switzerland, Britain and possibly other countries have imported semen and embryos from cloned animals or their progeny from the United States, seeking to create more consistently plump and productive livestock.
And although no vendor has publicly acknowledged it, meat or dairy products originating from such techniques are believed to be already on supermarket shelves.
The amounts are no doubt small, and the sale appears to be legal. But the development is noteworthy on a continent that has long objected to genetically modified crops and where many people look at animal cloning as potentially dangerous and cruel — even immoral.
So animal cloning is considered immoral if it is for food supply, but making cloned animal-human hybrids for stem cell research is not. From The Guardian in 2008:
First British human-animal hybrid embryos created by scientists
· Breakthrough could pave way for stem cell supply · Move will aid research into untreatable conditions
Britian's first human-animal hybrid embryos have been created, forming a crucial first step, scientists believe, towards a supply of stem cells that could be used to investigate debilitating and so far untreatable conditions such as Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's and motor neurone disease.
Lyle Armstrong, who led the work, gained permission in January from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) to create the embryos, known as "cytoplasmic hybrids".
His team at Newcastle University produced the embryos by inserting human DNA from a skin cell into a hollowed-out cow egg. An electric shock then induced the hybrid embryo to grow. The embryo, 99.9% human and 0.1% other animal, grew for three days, until it had 32 cells.
Eventually, scientists hope to grow such embryos for six days, and then extract stem cells from them. The researchers insisted the embryos would never be implanted into a woman and that the only reason they used cow eggs was due to the scarcity of human eggs.
And while stem cells from human-cow hybrid embryos will probably never be injected into a human patient, I am wondering where is the outcry?
There is none and there will not be. Why? Because in our upside down society, cloning for food is bad but cloning to live forever is good.
A few years ago I went shopping for a brand new house. Every model home I visited, regardless of the builder, had a gigantic master suite with a spa-like enormous bathroom where every morning you could cartwheel your way to the shower and back flip to the toilet. Down the hall, placed almost like an afterthought, were 3 or 4 tiny little bedrooms whose total square feet might add up to the space provided in the palatial master suite.
After the 5th house or so, I realized this was an indicator that society's values had shifted. Builders were building what the buyer wanted, which was clearly parental desire and comfort at the child's expense. I also knew it wasn't a good sign.
These days it is all about what parents want, not about what is best for the children. There is nowhere where this attitude is more apparent than in the assisted reproduction industry. We all heard of the Octomom, but it goes so much deeper than that. In vitro fertilization, better known as IVF, is not just about infertility anymore, it is about human manufacturing to specifications.
Recently, two stories have been in the news that illustrate my point. Gillian and Paul St. Lawrence, both fertile and in their 30's, have used IVF to create 5 embryos. They have frozen their 5 offspring until it is more convenient for them to raise children. From the Washington Post:
Our five frozen embryos, which we call our baby blastocysts, will remain in storage until we are ready to use them. Since study after study has indicated that the age of the uterus at the time the embryo is implanted is almost irrelevant to the success rate of achieving a healthy baby, we can wait 10 or 15 years: The chief consideration may well be how old I want to be when I'm raising a teenager.
Upon hearing this, my mother-in-law was quick to ask: "You don't have to wait until you are 40 to use the embryos, right?" No, we do not. We can choose to use them any time. And, of course, my husband and I are still free to have babies the old-fashioned way. We still have all the options we had prior to this project -- but now we have some insurance against future infertility.
Five human lives have been created and put in "storage" until they are ready to "use" as the St. Lawrence's "project" to provide themselves "insurance." (Her words not mine.) There was a time we used "gift" and "blessing" when referring to children but in this Brave New World, "project" and "insurance" are more appropriate. IVF is now being used for human manufacturing to specifications. In this case, ordered with delayed delivery.
What is particularly chilling (no pun intended) is Gillian's description of how she weighed the pros and cons of freezing her offspring as if she was deciding whether the lasagna she made the night before would freeze well enough to still taste good in a few months.
The second story is about an Australian couple who are complaining that they have to travel all the way to Thailand to use IVF to have a daughter. They have 3 healthy boys already (I assume made the old fashioned way) and want to use IVF and preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) to insure they have a girl. The problem is Australia does not allow IVF and PGD for sex selection. From the Herald Sun:
A MELBOURNE mum is so desperate to have a daughter she is traveling to Thailand so she can choose the sex of her next baby, frustrated at Australian medical authorities as they drag their feet over the issue.
Already blessed with three boys - aged 5, 4 and 1 - the 36-year-old and her husband say they have been forced to sidestep Australian laws because they cannot wait for federal medical authorities to decide if they will overturn their ban on the practice.
"At this point I would do anything to have a daughter," she said.
"It is an ethical thing we have weighed up. It hasn't been a decision taken lightly but it is one we feel we have reached and we are happy with.
"I wouldn't trade my sons for a million daughters - this is not about my sons. It is about me and my husband wanting a daughter.
At least she is honest. This is not about loving and caring for a girl, it is about her and her husband "wanting a daughter." There is a difference. If loving and caring for a girl was the goal, then adoption would certainly fit the bill. But when it is about insuring you get a genetically related female, then human manufacturing to specifications is the answer.
This woman insists it is not about her sons, but the reality of IVF and PGD is that she will create embryonic sons that she will in fact "trade" to get the embryonic daughter. She will create male offspring in the process, the clinic will just throw them out in favor of the females.
The Catholic Church had always been against IVF, even in cases of infertility. Once you create life outside the body, it naturally turns into the manufacturing of humans. We are meant to be begotten not made. And certainly not made to specifications. I think these two cases illustrate the wisdom of the Church.
In the end, I never bought a new house. I stayed in my solidly-built 1940s bungalow where the bedrooms are nearly all the same size and there is no master bath. Now that I think about it, they didn't have IVF in the 1940s...
I expect the secular media to get it wrong. I expect them to relabel embryonic stem cells "early" stem cells to draw attention away from the fact that they come from embryos. I expect the secular media to insist that the product of somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) is not a cloned human embryo, just some ball of cells that can be harvested for any reason. I do not expect such slight of hand from a publication calling themselves Catholic.
Bill Tammeus, at the National Catholic Reporter says It's easy to be mislead on stem cell research. He is right, but he is the one doing the misleading. He insists that the product of somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT) also known as cloning is NOT a cloned human embryo, just a "small cluster of stem cells." The American Medical Association disagrees:
"Alternatively, stem cells have also been obtained from embryos generated from unfertilized eggs using a technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). Initially, SCNT technology was designed to produce embryos from which immunologically compatible stem cells could be derived for use in treating human diseases (therapeutic cloning). However, recent advances in the technology have prompted concerns about embryos formed by SCNT being misused for generating human clones (reproductive cloning)."
See many are concerned that SCNT will lead to reproductive cloning because it does in fact create a human embryo. If SCNT, the same technique that created Dolly, makes cloned sheep embryos, then it sure as sh** makes human embryos when used with human eggs and human somatic cells. (Sorry I am really angry!)
The National Academy of Sciences also refers to the product of SCNT as a blastocyst, which is an early embryo, that could grow into a fetus if placed in a uterus:
“The method used to initiate the reproductive cloning procedure is called nuclear transplantation, or somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). It involves replacing the chromosomes of a human egg with the nucleus of a body (somatic) cell from a developed human. In reproductive cloning, the egg is then stimulated to undergo the first few divisions to become an aggregate of 64 to 200 cells called a blastocyst. The blastocyst is a preimplantation embryo that contains some cells with the potential to give rise to a fetus and other cells that help to make the placenta. If the blastocyst is placed in a uterus, it can implant and form a fetus. If the blastocyst is instead maintained in the laboratory, cells can be extracted from it and grown on their own.”
Tammeus writes:
I also know it's easy to be misled on stem cell research if you don't name and understand things properly.
Apparently he knows better than the American Medical Association and the National Academy of Sciences. Mr. Tammeus, maybe it is you that needs some enlightening so you can learn how to "name and understand things properly."
I have written before about the novel Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro, about the life of clones created to be organ donors. I highly recommend this book because it is the future of a society that accepts the creation of human life to be harvestable biological material. We are headed down this road already creating human embryos to be harvested for research.
The following passage from Never Let Me Go explains how society came to accept the creation and harvesting of clones. It is my favorite passage from the novel because it illustrates just how slippery the slope is. Just how easy it is to label a human life as "not human" to satisfy a perceived need. Here a woman explains to a clone how it was she came to be and why her lot in life is what it is:
After the great war, in the early fifties, when the great breakthroughs in science followed one after the other so rapidly, there wasn't time to take stock, to ask sensible questions. Suddenly there were all these new possibilities laid before us, all these ways to cure so many previously incurable conditions. This is what the world noticed the most, wanted the most. And for a long time, people preferred to believe these organs appeared from nowhere, or at most that they grew in a kind of vacuum.
But by the time people came to consider...whether you should have been brought into existence at all, well by then it was too late. There was no way to reverse the process. How can you ask a world that has come to regard cancer as curable, how can you ask such a world to put away that cure, to go back to the dark days?
There was no going back. However uncomfortable people were about your existence, their overwhelming concern was that their own children, their spouses, their parents, their friends, did not die from cancer, motor neurone disease, heart disease. So for a long time you were kept in the shadows, and people did their best not to think about you. And if they did, they tried to convince themselves you weren't really like us. That you weren't really human, so it didn't matter. [my emphasis]
Never Let Me Go is now a movie. Here is the trailer. I really hope they left the above passage intact because it is a truth that everyone needs to hear.
I have been meaning to blog aboutThe Catholic Laboratory for awhile. The Catholic Laboratory is a site focused on what "the Church has done and continues to do for science." There are great podcasts, resources and all kinds of neat information about Catholics in science.
Yesterday, The Catholic Laboratory pointed out that the new electric car the Chevrolet Volt was named after Catholic scientist Alessandro Volta and the Vauxhall Ampera, is named after André-Marie Ampère.
I know a lot about the genetics of cystic fibrosis also known as CF. I have tested thousands of people for mutations in the CFTR gene that cause this debilitating lung disease. The majority of people that I have tested were pregnant women. I know some of those babies that were found to have CF (upon further testing) probably did not make it out of the womb. Like with Down Syndrome, there is a systematic assault on fetuses with CF. I have heard first hand accounts of women who were pressured to abort their CF baby and made to feel like they were terrible mothers if they didn't. This is truly a shame because, as I also know first hand, there are people walking around who genetically have CF, but are healthy. Some have CF and do not even know it. Even if they are not healthy, CF children are still wonderful human beings that should be celebrated.
I saw two such people on America's Got Talent. Christina and Ali were told they would not be able to sing. I am so glad they proved the doctors wrong:
If you haven't noticed, I have not been blogging of late. I apologize. I believe that I have over scheduled myself and now something has got to give.
First, I agreed to teach 2 class of high school chemistry to 30 high schoolers in the Fall. Being that I have never taught chemistry at the high school level, only college level, I am staring down a ton of prep work.
If that was not enough, I agreed to go back to my local molecular genetics lab and work full-time for a few months while one of them goes on maternity leave.
All great opportunities that have taken me away from blogging and will continue to do so for a few more months.
I will try to keep posting a few things now and again and will keep tweeting on Twitter. In case you are not already following me on Twitter, I am @MaryMeetsDolly.
Have a great summer and say prayers that I do not lose my mind!
I have always argued that the time to discuss cutting edge technologies that will shape humanity is BEFORE they are achieved not after. As a society we need to decide NOW what kinds of limits we want to put on genetics, cloning and genetic engineering. The minute the headline reads, "Cloned human baby born" it is too late. But this requires diligence and a proactive approach to understanding what biotechnology is capable of. Most people just do not want to deal with it.
The Center for Genetics and Society, in collaboration with Mothers for a Human Future among others, has launched a website called Bioconversations that gets everyday people thinking about issues in genetics and reproductive technologies. While I do not agree with everything that the Center for Genetics and Society promotes (and wish they would do more than just ask open ended questions), I applaud their efforts to begin conversations that not many are willing to have. Their home page speaks to what I try to do with this blog:
We urge you to consider the questions presented in each video in this series, use the resources at www.BioConversations.org to learn more, talk with your family, friends, and neighbors, keep learning and talking, and get involved as you see fit—as soon as you can. Time is of the essence. The technology is being developed very rapidly. We all have to work hard to ensure that Americans from all walks of life have a say in what should—and should not—be done—before it’s too late.
Why do you need to be a part of this conversation? Lightning-fast developments in genetic, reproductive, biomedical, and other technologies are driving us into new, uncharted, and potentially dangerous territory. The momentum of technological development and market dynamics is considerable. In addition, a small but vocal group of people who call themselves “transhumanists” is strongly promoting a future in which human beings are technologically re-engineered.
The transhumanist campaign underscores the pressing need for all citizens to get up to speed—and quickly—on a wide range of technologies with profound implications for us as human beings. It also points to an urgent need for diverse voices and diverse points of view to join in the public conversation about the use of these technologies.
BioConversations is designed to bring more people into this crucial conversation. We urge you to use the resources on this site and spark a conversation about these new groundbreaking technologies by sharing these resources with your family, friends, and neighbors—-and keep the conversation going.
Here is the first installment of 5 videos they have created to get us thinking about the future of our species:
The Daily Mail reports that male infertility is on the rise and some are calling it a crisis:
One in five men could suffer from fertility problems. And scientists have warned that it's just going to get worse...
There's a crisis brewing, but it has nothing to do with the economic deficit or the current political uncertainty. Scientists are warning that rising levels of male infertility have become so perilous that it is a serious 'public health issue'. And some go even further.
Professor Niels Skakkebaek, of the University of Copenhagen, describes the issue 'as important as global warming'. Last week, one science writer even suggested, in starkly terrifying terms, that if scientists from Mars were to study the male reproductive system, they would possibly conclude that man was destined for rapid extinction.
And if it continues, this trend could indicate men are on a path to becoming completely infertile within a few generations.
From USA Today
And what does the article suggest is causing this reduction in male fertility? They cite everything from red meat and obesity to traffic fumes and soy beans. The many comments on this piece ask the same question I asked, "What about synthetic estrogen?"
Women have been taking synthetic estrogen as chemical birth control (better known as The Pill) for decades and then excreting it in their urine. These synthetic hormones are not being removed from the water supply and the levels are not even being monitored. Scientists are discovering that synthetic hormones are affecting the fertility of fish. From the Seattle Post Intelligencer:
Birth control may be harming state's salmon Synthetic estrogen in water seems to affect reproduction
Birth-control pills can curb the reproduction of more than just the women taking them. Western Washington scientists have found that synthetic estrogen -- a common ingredient in oral contraceptives -- can drastically reduce the fertility of male rainbow trout.
The man-made compounds are showing up in waterways around the nation -- pumped into rivers, lakes and Puget Sound with water from sewage-treatment plants.
And they're being found at levels that can harm fish, possibly even this region's struggling salmon populations....
The findings are likely to fuel concerns about the environmental effects of chemicals that aren't being filtered out by sewage plants, including pharmaceuticals and pesticides that can mimic hormones.
In frogs, river otters and fish, scientists are "finding the presence of female hormones making the male species less male," said Doug Myers, wetlands and habitat specialist for the Puget Sound Action Team, the government agency coordinating restoration of the Sound.
There are no standards for how much synthetic estrogen and other hormones can be released in sewage and wastewater, and treatment plants generally do not monitor for it.
If synthetic estrogen can affect the "maleness" of fish, it such a stretch to think that the rise in male infertility might be caused by the Pill? That synthetic estrogen in our water supply is making human males less male? That a pill that takes a normal female cycle and turns it upside down would also affect male fertility in unexpected ways? Why is that NOT one of the many possible reasons cited by this article?
I wonder how infertile men everywhere would feel if they found out that it was synthetic estrogen in their water supply that might be the cause of their problems. I wonder if that is why scientists and others are dumbfounded by the utter silence on this issue. Could it be that the Pill is, like abortion, a sacred cow that no matter the devastation it wreaks, we would not dare speak a word against it?
After all, the USA Today's celebration of The Pill's 50th birthday says that it is about equality. Could it be that women who choose to be temporarily infertile maybe causing males to be infertile as well? (That's equality for ya.)
Some people think a rise of male infertility is just fine. We need less people on this planet anyway right? Be careful what you wish for because you just might get it. I have said many times that fiction often contains truth. What seems impossible in a book or movie often comes to pass and often sooner than we would think.
I am reminded of Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake. This book if full of gems, but the "BlyssPluss Pill" really hits the nail on the head. What is BlyssPluss? It is a pill designed by Crake, the species-splicing genius, to do three things at once. First, it would "protect the user against all known sexually transmitted diseases." Second, it would provide "an unlimited supply of libido and sexual prowess" while "eliminating feelings of low self-worth." Third, it would "prolong youth."
But that is not all. From a conversation between Jimmy, the hero, and Crake:
These three capabilities would be the selling points, said Crake; but there would be a fourth, which would not be advertised. The BlyssPluss Pill would also act as a sure-fire one-time-does-it-all-birth-control pill, for male and female alike, thus automatically lowering the population level...
"So basically you're going to sterilize people without them knowing it under the guise of giving them the ultra in orgies?"
"That's a crude way of putting it, " said Crake.
There is just one catch. Without giving too much away, it is the BlyssPluss Pill, and components therein, that eradicates the human race. This guy thinks that scientists from Mars would conclude that is exactly where the human race is headed.
You know how some films stand the test of time even though they are old? Well in the fast paced world of biotechnology 3 years is an eternity. But this stem cell quiz is as fun now as it was then:
I have reported before that IVF embryos may be at risk for major disease later in life. Because IVF embryos are conceived in a laboratory, outside their natural environment, epigenetic changes can occur. Epigenetics is the study of how and why genes are turned on or off. Conception in a dish affects the genes that are turned on or off in an embryo. Studies have shown that IVF babies are as 3 to 9 times more likely to suffer from Beckwith-Wiedemann Syndrome, a disorder which can be caused by epigenetic changes. This UK Times Online article explains how IVF babies may be at risk for other diseases:
Scientists have discovered that the DNA of babies conceived through IVF differs from that of other children, putting them at greater risk of diseases such as diabetes and obesity later in life....
The changes are not in the genes themselves but in the mechanism that switches them on and off, the study of which is known as epigenetics.
“These epigenetic differences have the potential to affect embryonic development and foetal growth, as well as influencing long-term patterns of gene expression associated with increased risk of many human diseases,” said Professor Carmen Sapienza, a geneticist at Temple University in Philadelphia, who jointly led the research....
In their findings, published in the Human Molecular Genetics journal, Sapienza and his colleagues took blood samples from the placenta and umbilical cords of 10 IVF children and 13 children who were naturally conceived.
They studied the DNA of cells taken from the blood to see if there were differences in the level of methylation. This is the process by which molecules known as methyl groups are attached to genes to shut them down when they are not needed.
The results showed that the level of methylation in the cells taken from IVF babies was significantly lower — implying that some genes were becoming active at the wrong times.
“We have shown that in vitro conception is associated with differences in gene methylation and that some of these differences may affect gene expression,” said Sapienza.
Evidence shows that IVF causes epigenetic changes. Most people assume that these changes are not inherited. Watching Ghost in Your Genes, a NOVA special on epigenetics, I realized that these epigenetic changes caused by IVF maybe inherited by subsequent generations.
Of course, we will not know for sure until IVF children age and have their own children, but evidence suggests that epigenetic changes are not wiped out in offspring but are inherited from one generation to the next. Mouse studies have shown that epigenetic changes in mice are inherited by the following generation. In the following video, Wolf Reik describes epigenetic changes in IVF embryos and his discovery that the epigenetic changes of his mice were inherited:
Further on in Ghost in Your Genes, scientists discuss how famine in grandparents affected the life span of grandchildren in a remote area of northern Sweden and how a single exposure of a pregnant rat to a toxin caused epigenetic changes that were seen 4 generations later.
The upshot? Conceiving your children in a dish may not just affect them, but your grandchildren and possibly your great-grandchildren as well.
For more information on epigenetics watch the entire Ghost in Your Genes special. Part 1, Part 2, Part 4 and Part 5.
The Vatican will help fund a research study into the potential use of adult stem cells to treat intestinal and possibly other diseases, officials announced April 23. The research study, now in a preliminary stage, is being carried out by a group of American and Italian scientists led by the University of Maryland's School of Medicine.
The university said that the Vatican had already agreed to donate 2 million euros ($2.7 million) for the project. Cardinal Renato Martino said the exact amount would be decided in future meetings.
The Vatican views adult stem-cell research as a viable alternative to embryonic stem-cell research. The Catholic Church is opposed to embryonic stem-cell research because, unlike adult stem-cell research, it involves the destruction of human life (embryos).
Cardinal Martino said the adult stem-cell research project enjoys Vatican support due to its respect for the life of the embryo. "This research protects life," the Cardinal asserted during a meeting with Italian and American scientists and health officials to outline the project. "I want to stress that it doesn’t involve embryonic stem cells, where one helps oneself and then throws the embryo away and kills a human life."
CatholicVote.org says it’s time to use Earth Day to celebrate nature’s greatest gift – human life.
“Our goal is to use Earth Day to get Americans to think more deeply about what it means to truly respect the Earth and creation. Prevailing environmental attitudes too often view humans as the enemy of nature. We believe the human person is God’s greatest creation, and the Earth’s greatest resource. Building up a culture of life is the single most important way to build a culture that respects the environment,” said Brian Burch, President of CatholicVote.org Education Fund.
“The members of CatholicVote.org wanted to bring this balanced Catholic view of the environment to the streets,” said Burch, “and that’s why we’ve advertising on over 50 buses in Chicago, San Francisco, and Seattle.”
“Respect for the God’s creation has a long history in Catholic teaching, long before it became popular with our secular culture,” said Burch.
In honor of Earth Day, I give you this quote from Janet E. Smith's Uncovering a String of Lies about the deceptions surrounding chemical contraceptives:
I keep hoping someone will do a study of the carbon footprint of contraceptives. Production costs are considerable, as is the cost for packaging and distributing and disposing of contraceptives. The estrogens, in particular in some forms of the pill, are having serious negative effects on the environment. Well-known are the reports of a serious disproportion between male and female fish when a water supply has too much estrogen in it. And what other effects might there be of excess estrogen in the environment? Some have conjectured that premature puberty in young girls and the increase in infertility among males may be traceable to excess estrogen in the water supply, or perhaps even in their mother’s systems as they were gestated.
For my part, I believe all those who use natural family planning should get a tax credit for environmentally responsible behavior.
Long touted as a potentially powerful weapon against HIV, stem cell therapy may be moving one step closer to reality. Researchers may soon begin using stem cell therapy in clinical trials for patients not responding to antiretroviral drugs (see related AIDS Beacon news)....
Meant for individuals no longer responding to the traditional regimen of antivirals, Berkhout’s proposed stem cell therapy holds promise for long-term, effective results after a single treatment.
“This therapy would offer an alternative for HIV-infected patients that can no longer be treated with regular antivirals,” said Professor Berkhout in a press release. Instead, the patient’s own immune system would battle the virus....
To battle HIV, the proposed stem cell therapy involves harvesting the patient’s own stem cells from the bone marrow. After extracting the cells, doctors purify them, insert antiviral DNA into the cells, and reintroduce them back into the patient.
Once back inside the patient, the cells’ new antiviral DNA goes to work interfering with HIV’s DNA and hindering the virus’ ability to reproduce itself.
If the therapy is successful, then the antiviral DNA is passed to every generation of immune cells born from the modified stem cells, which means only one treatment would be necessary....
Researchers are now seriously looking at stem cells as a potential avenue to a cure – a way of freeing HIV patients from the burden of a lifetime of medications to manage the disease – as a growing body of research is developing around this topic (see the related article in The Body).
Berkhout’s research team hopes to begin clinical trials within three years. “So far, very promising results have been obtained in the laboratory, and we are now testing the safety and efficacy in a pre-clinical mouse model,” said Professor Berkhout.
Lately it seems that some people are having a love affair with China's draconian policies. From Diane Francis who wrote the following in the Financial Post:
The "inconvenient truth" overhanging the UN's Copenhagen conference is not that the climate is warming or cooling, but that humans are overpopulating the world.
A planetary law, such as China's one-child policy, is the only way to reverse the disastrous global birthrate currently, which is one million births every four days....
China has proven that birth restriction is smart policy. Its middle class grows, all its citizens have housing, health care, education and food, and the one out of five human beings who live there are not overpopulating the planet.
To Thomas Friedman who wrote this in the NY Times:
One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages.
I am wondering if Francis and Friedman are referring to this story in the UK Times Online about China's "enlightened" "smart policy" that is incarcerating and forcibly sterilizing people for violating the one-child rule:
About 1,300 people are being held in cramped conditions in towns across Puning county, in Guangdong Province, as officials try to put pressure on couples who have illegal children to come forward for sterilisation.
The 20-day campaign, which was launched on April 7, aims to complete 9,559 sterilisations in Puning, which, with a population of 2.24 million, is the most populous county in the province.
A doctor in Daba village said that his team was working flat out, beginning sterilisations every day at 8am and working straight through until 4am the following day. Related Links
Zhang Lizhao, 38, the father of two sons, aged 6 and 4, said that he rushed home late last night from buying loquats for his wholesale fruit business to undergo sterilisation after his elder brother was detained. His wife had already returned so that the brother would be freed.
Mr Zhang said: “This morning my wife called me and said they were forcing her to be sterilised today. She pleaded with the clinic to wait because she has her period. But they would not wait a single day. I called and begged them but they said no. So I have rushed back. I am satisfied because I have two sons.”
Thousands of others have refused to submit and officials are continuing to detain relatives, including elderly parents, to force them to submit to surgery. Those in detention are required to listen to lectures on the rules limiting the size of families.
If this is "smart" and "enlightened," I will take dumb and in the dark any day of the week.
What I found almost as disturbing as the article are the comments where people seem to think that forced sterilization, especially of the less worthy members of society, is not just morally acceptable, but a GOOD idea:
Good idea - we could do with some of that on a council estate near here....there are some families that have never worked, they have children who will never work and they breed like mice to enable the rest of us to keep them in the double council houses with free tax perks and the like -
Sounds like a good idea to me - 1st of all I would sterilise all of the people who want Gordon Brown to run another term as PM. If they cannot see that once the election is over he will be back to ignoring what the people who elected him want, taxing us to the hilt and wasting it on more social engineering, and breaking all manifesto pledges they are not intellegent enough, and under any other Darwinian society would not be fit to breed the next generation.
Whilst I cannot agree to the chinese approach on this issue, I must say that it should be applied to some in the UK. Those living off the state should be limited so the rest of us do not have to pay for their irresponsibility.
People should not have as many children as they want. That is selfish. You may not want the state to interfere but I'll bet that you want the state to pay. There has been one large familiy in the news recently who should be sterilised.
Hello!? Do we need to be reminded that the eugenics movement of the United States in the early 20th century that resulted in forced sterilizations of many Americans also lead to the Holocaust of Nazi Germany? Eugenics is back in vogue. Be careful what you wish for people because you just might get it.
Believe it or not there is one issue out there where the mainstream media and the Catholic Church do not collide. What is it? The granting of patents for naturally occurring human genes. You are probably not aware that about 25% of all human genes are patented. This means that a company or university owns the genetic code that makes up that gene. They own genes that you have and use in your body everyday.
You also may not be aware that the patenting of your genes affects you directly. Because a company legal "owns" a gene sequence, they control who is able to test that gene or research that gene. In the case of genetic testing, labs are limited on what genes they can offer tests for because of gene patents, which limits the choices they can offer patients. Labs that are allowed to test a patented gene pay royalties to the companies that own the genes which drives up the cost of the genetic test.
In the case of some genes like the breast cancer genes BRCA I and BRCA II, one company, Myriad, owns the gene and only Myriad offers the test for variations that signal a high risk of breast or ovarian cancer. This means that if a patient wants a second test run by another company to confirm the test result and test interpretation before they have radical surgery, they are out of luck. Many women simply cannot afford the $3000 test that could give them the information to save their life. And because of gene patents, they cannot go anywhere else.
The ACLU has taken on gene patents and it is suing Myriad and the US Trademark and Patent Office. Here is a clip from 60 Minutes on the progress of this lawsuit:
I believe that patenting naturally occurring gene sequences is unethical. It is hard to find official Church teaching on gene patents, but I did find this quote from John Paul II in an address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences:
The ability to establish the genetic map should not lead to reducing the subject to his genetic inheritance and to the alterations that can be made to it. In his mystery, man goes beyond the sum of his biological characteristics. He is a fundamental unit, in which the biological cannot be separated from the spiritual, family and social dimensions without incurring the serious risk of suppressing the person's very nature and making him a mere object of analysis. By his nature and uniqueness, the human person is the norm for all scientific research. "He is and he ought to be the beginning, the subject and the object..." of all research (Second Vatican Council, Gaudium et spes, n. 25).
On this subject, we rejoice that numerous researchers have refused to allow discoveries made about the genome to be patented. Since the human body is not an object that can be disposed of at will, the results of research should be made available to the whole scientific community and cannot be the property of a small group.
I believe that I am interpreting John Paull II correctly by saying that is unethical to patent a naturally occurring gene. Patents should be be awarded for inventions, like novel approaches to testing or manipulating the gene, but not for the gene itself.
To my fellow humans who are entering that most precarious stage of human development.
Let me begin by congratulating you on making it through the embryonic stage. Too many of our fellow humans don’t even make it as far as you have now. Many died of natural causes. Others were cut down prior to implantation by an abortifacient. Still others are trapped in the freezers of IVF clinics, in suspended animation awaiting their fate.
You have made it to the second stage of life. But you’re not out of the woods, as they say, until you’re out of the womb. In America there are roughly 250 abortions for every 1000 live births, which means that you have (all other things being equal) a one in five chance of still being aborted. Here are four reasons you might be aborted and what you can do to avoid this gruesome fate.
#1. Don’t be the unlucky third in series of IVF induced triplets
...To save money on in vitro fertilization, couples can implant several embryos at one time in order to increase the changes of pregnancy and reduce the cost of multiple procedures. Although it lowers the cost, it increases the chances of multiple pregnancies, which increase the risks to both mother and children. As the Washington Post noted several years ago, “Carrying three babies to term would more than double the woman’s risk of developing the most severe diseases of pregnancy, such as preeclampsia. The average triplet is born two months premature, significantly raising the risk of disabilities such as cerebral palsy and of lifelong damage to the infant’s lungs, eyes, brain and other organs.”
Unlike embryos, money can’t be created in a Petri dish. Which is why it is less costly (in economic if not in human terms) to just kill you rather than pay for another round of IVF. They euphemistically refer to this as “selective reduction”— your parents have selected to reduce your chances for survival to zero....
#2 Don’t be anything other than “chromosomally normal”
May our Lord have mercy on your poor fetal soul if you have the misfortune to possess a chromosomal abnormality. Once you make it out of the womb you can be filled to the brim with bile—indeed you can rape, pillage, plunder, and murder—and you’ll have people defending your right to live. But right now if they measure the fluid behind your neck using a nuchal scan and discover you have too much—well, you’re as good as dead. Such a test reveals that you may have the unforgivable condition of Down syndrome....
#3 Don’t be a girl Speaking of chromosomes, be sure you have a Y chromosome to go along with the X. If you have the misfortune of being of the homogametic sex you have an increased risk of being killed. It may not be a concern if your parents are white, black, or Hispanic. But if you’re parents are Chinese, Japanese, Indian, or Filipino you may be in trouble....
#4 Don’t squint Several years ago in England, doctors were given permission to create a baby free from a genetic disorder which would have caused the child to have a severe squint. According to the Daily Telegraph, the license was granted by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) to Prof Gedis Grudzinskas. The good professor said he would seek to screen for any genetic factor at all that would cause a family severe distress....
I would like to add to Joe Carter's list of what-not-to-do or-be as a fetus:
#5 Do not have cystic fibrosis.
Even though the average life expectancy of someone with CF is now 37.4 years old with many people living into their 40s and beyond (not to mention the possibility of improved treatment in the coming decades), many fetuses with CF are aborted. (I personally know a child with CF that has no symptoms of the disease.) Even so many parents of CF fetuses (including the aforementioned child) are pressured to abort. So if you are a fetus with CF watch out!
#6 Do not have a club foot, webbed fingers or toes, or cleft palate.
Even though these conditions are easily corrected with surgery, stories of later term abortions in England indicate that having any of these conditions puts your life in jeopardy.
#7 Do not have a genetic predisposition for adult onset disease.
There are genetic factors that put some people at risk for breast or colon cancer, even obesity. More and more fetuses are being aborted for a genetic predisposition to a disease they may not get until they are an adult and even then may have a cure by then. So even if you may never develop breast or colon cancer or become obese, you may still be aborted. Lori B. Andrews, a well-known reproductive rights lawyer, reports that one study has as many as 12% of parents reporting they would abort their fetus if they had a genetic predisposition to obesity.
#8 Do not get implanted in the wrong uterus.
If you started your life as an IVF embryo and you get implanted in a uterus other then your mom's, watch out. Last year a woman aborted another couple's last embryo when it was implanted into her uterus by mistake.
Previously, I blogged about 3 parent monkeys that were created to "cure" mitochondrial disease. I warned that there was a push to create 3 parent human embryos for the same purpose. Well less than a year later, scientists in the UK announced they have created human embryos with 3 genetic parents.
Why would scientists want to engineer an embryo with the genetic material from 3 people? To "prevent" the inheritance of mitochondrial disease. Not all of our DNA that we inherit is in the nuclei of the egg and sperm that join at conception. In the cytoplasm of our mother's egg are mitochondria. Mitochondria have their own DNA called mtDNA. We inherit our mtDNA only from our mother because sperm's mitochondria are dumped at conception. There are genetic mutations that cause disease in mtDNA and a woman with a such a mutation cannot help but pass this mutation on to her children.
This is where the three parent embryos come in. Here is how it works. Scientists took the nucleus out of an embryo had a mutation in its mtDNA and put it into an embryo whose mtDNA was normal, after removing the nucleus of that embryo of course. The result is one embryo with the nuclear DNA from its mother and father and the mtDNA from another embryo and its mother. Confused? Here is a simplified diagram that I made from the one in the Nature paper. (A zygote is the single celled embryo that results from conception.)
To make this work scientists destroyed one human embryo by removing its nuclear DNA and added the DNA from another human embryo to make a third recombinant embryo. And they did it 80 times creating 80 embryos with 3 genetic parents.
But to hear the media talk about it, this is no more than simple tinkering to prevent disease. From the BBC:
Embryos containing DNA from a man and two women have been created by scientists at Newcastle University. They say their research, published in the journal Nature, has the potential to help mothers with rare genetic disorders have healthy children.
The aim is to prevent damaged DNA in mitochondria - the "batteries" which power the cell - from being passed on by the mother.
IVF clinics are not currently permitted to carry out the procedure.
Around one in 200 children is born each year with mutations in the mitochondrial DNA. In most cases this causes only mild disease, sometimes without symptoms. But around one in 6,500 children is born with mitochondrial disease, which can cause serious and often fatal conditions, including muscular weakness, blindness and heart failure.
The scientists have developed a technique which would potentially allow them to replace defective mitochondria during IVF. The research, funded by the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign, Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust, used newly fertilised eggs left over from IVF treatment.
The nuclei from the father's sperm and the mother's egg, which contain the parents' DNA, were removed, leaving behind the faulty mitochondria. The nuclei were put into another egg from which the nucleus had been removed, but which retained its mitochondria. This new embryo contained the genes from both parents plus a tiny amount of mitochondrial DNA from the donor egg.
"What we've done is like changing the battery on a laptop," said lead author Professor Doug Turnbull. "The energy supply now works properly, but none of the information on the hard drive has been changed.
"A child born using this method would have correctly functioning mitochondria, but in every other respect would get all their genetic information from their father and mother."
There are some very important points to make here. First and foremost, these scientists ARE NOT manipulating EGGS. They are manipulating EMBRYOS which are whole members of the human species. This is human experimentation straight up that is being likened to "changing the battery in a laptop." I ask WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE?
Second, this does not prevent the inheritance of mitochondrial disease. The embryos created have inherited the defective mitochondria. Their DNA is implanted in a different embryo that has normal mitochondria. So this technique doesn't cure mitochondrial disease. Much like PGD, it doesn't fix the disease, it simply makes sure no embryo with defective mitochondria are born.
Third, there is a ban in the UK on implanting engineered embryos. To use this technique to produce children in Britain, authorities would have to repeal the ban on implanting engineered embryos. You know those animal-human hybrid embryos created by cloning with cow and rabbit eggs that they promised would never, ever see the darkness of a womb.
Needless to say even though the intention of this technique is to produce a disease free child, the Catholic Church would find it morally wrong for many reasons. First, this technique requires the embryos to be made in a lab through in vitro fertilization instead of in a womb. Second, this technique essentially destroys two embryos creating a third that is a genetic hybrid. And finally, it is a genetic manipulation that would continue to be inherited generation after generation.
It has been estimated that nearly 90% of all Down Syndrome babies are aborted. What many people do not know is that all over the country there are waiting lists to adopt Down Syndrome babies. For any woman or couple that has been faced with a Down Syndrome diagnosis for their baby, please watch this video and know that there are people who want to help.
If you wish to adopt a Down Syndrome child or wish to give the gift of a Down Syndrome child to a waiting family, visit The National Adoption Awareness Program website or call 1-888-796-5504. Hat Tip: Sherry Tyree
This is a post to thank all of those who have donated their plasma to save babies from Rh disease. Without your plasma 3 of my children may have fallen victim to Rh disease. Who are these selfless angels? The men and women who have antibodies to the Rh factor that donate their plasma to make products like RhoGAM and the Anti-D vaccine.
What is Rh disease? It is a severe form of anemia that is caused by a mother's immune system attacking a fetus. We are all either Rh positive or Rh negative. Rh is a factor on our red blood cells. If you are Rh positive you have the factor. If you are Rh negative you do not. The problem comes when a Rh negative woman and an Rh positive man make an Rh positive child. During delivery, mom can be exposed to the baby's Rh positive blood. If this happens she will make antibodies against the Rh factor. While the first pregnancy with a Rh positive child is fine, any subsequent pregnancies with an Rh positive baby for a mother with Rh antibodies can be fatal to the baby. The mom's Rh antibodies find the Rh positive red blood cells of the baby and attack. This causes mild to severe anemia in the baby and can cause stillbirth.
Up until the Rh factor was discovered in 1937, millions of women would miscarry their second, third, fourth (and so on) pregnancies. But now that we know an injection of anti-Rh antibodies can prevent a woman from producing her own antibodies to Rh factor. This is the RhoGAM injection that Rh negative mothers like me get before and after birth to prevent our immune systems from becoming sensitized to the Rh factor.
Without RhoGAM and other anti-Rh injections, millions of babies may not have survived gestation. But where do the anti-Rh antibodies come from? They come from generous donation of plasma from Rh negative people who have been exposed to Rh positive blood. These people have the anti-Rh antibodies and donate their plasma to make products like RhoGAM.
Lately, the news has picked up on the heroes that donate their plasma. I want to highlight and thank them for their selfless donations. Some of these unsung heroes are women who developed Rh sensitivity and lost babies to stillbirth. They donate so other women never have to experience their loss. From The Daily Mail:
An Australian man who has been donating his extremely rare kind of blood for 56 years has saved the lives of more than two million babies.
James Harrison, 74, has an antibody in his plasma that stops babies dying from Rhesus disease, a form of severe anaemia.
He has enabled countless mothers to give birth to healthy babies, including his own daughter, Tracey, who had a healthy son thanks to her father's blood.
Mr Harrison has been giving blood every few weeks since he was 18 years old and has now racked up a total of 984 donations.
When he started donating, his blood was deemed so special his life was insured for one million Australian dollars.
Between them, Marilyn McCarthy and Elizabeth Pascoe may have saved tens of thousands of babies over the years....
McCarthy, 72, and Pascoe, 68, don't want other pregnant women to go through what they did to build their families. So for 25 years and 30 years, respectively, the women have traveled twice a week from their Buffalo homes to a nearby lab to donate plasma, the key ingredient for a product called RhoGAM.
Before RhoGAM's debut 40 years ago, nearly 10,000 U.S. babies died of HDN each year because their mothers were Rh-negative and they weren't. Four of those babies were McCarthy's.
McCarthy delivered her firstborn in 1956, her second in 1957. "Our first two were perfectly fine," McCarthy says. "Back then, we weren't aware of the problems with Rh. We just knew some babies had to be transfused after they were born."
But in 1959 and in 1961, after the drugs she had received in labor wore off, McCarthy awoke to hear her doctor tell her husband that their sons were stillborn, and a third son was stillborn in 1963. In 1965, her next child, a girl, survived after getting six blood transfusions while still in the womb and two more after birth....
After her daughter's birth, McCarthy shared a hospital room with another Rh-negative mother, Pascoe, and, McCarthy says, "we've been friends ever since."
Pascoe's first pregnancy was uneventful, but with her second, blood tests sounded an alarm in the sixth month. "Your body is attacking your baby," her doctor said, warning that she could lose the child. Says Pascoe: "I can't tell you what that did to me."
Apparently, RhoGAM contains enough Rh antibodies to trick the mother's immune system into not attacking her fetus's Rh-positive red blood cells. At first, plasma used to make RhoGAM came from women like McCarthy and Pascoe, whose blood contained Rh antibodies because they'd carried Rh-positive babies....
There's no way, however, to reproduce the personal connection that donors like McCarthy and Pascoe have. "I think we're all put on this Earth for a reason," Pascoe says, "and I think my reason is to give back."
Thank you to all who donate their plasma to help save babies from Rh disease. There are no words that I can use to express my gratitude. All I can do is post a picture of my beautiful children, some of whom are alive because of your generosity.
An Australian man who has been donating his extremely rare kind of blood for 56 years has saved the lives of more than two million babies.
Between them, Marilyn McCarthy and Elizabeth Pascoe may have saved tens of thousands of babies over the years....
