Geron, Embryonic Stem Cell Research and Your Tax Dollars

ChelseaEmbryonic Stem Cell ResearchLeave a Comment

geron.pngLast week, citing financial difficulties as the main factor behind their decision, U.S. based Geron corporation announced that it was suspending the world’s first human trial for cells derived from human embryos and getting out of the embryonic stem cell (ESC) research business altogether.

In recent years private investment into ESC research has been steadily declining for several reasons, not the least of which being the fact that it has failed to deliver the incredible results that its supporters have been promising. That’s why ESC researchers have been lobbying heavily for expanded government funding for their research. And they’ve been getting it!

Geron was no exception. Yes, the biotech company was using some of your tax dollars for their unethical research before they gave up on it last week. Last year, they were awarded five cash grants totaling $1.2 million under the “Qualifying Therapeutic Discovery Project” included in Obamacare. Three of those grants were for ESC research and were valued at $735,000 altogether.

Among the qualifications to receive these grants, projects must “show reasonable potential to result in new therapies to treat areas of unmet medical need,” according to Geron’s own press release. Additionally, “preference was given to projects that showed the greatest potential to create and sustain (directly or indirectly) high quality, high-paying jobs in the United States, and advance United States competitiveness in the fields of life, biological, and medical sciences.” Besides announcing that it was getting out of the ESC business, Geron also announced that it was cutting 66 full-time positions, which is about 38% of its workforce.

Since Obama took office 434 million in taxpayer dollars has been spent on ESC research – $143 million in 2009, $165 million in 2010 and $126 million in 2011. That’s nearly half a billion! It may not seem like a lot of money compared to how much the government is wasting on other pointless projects, but it still has got to end. If private investors are not willing to put their money into this research, the Federal Government certainly has no business forcing taxpayers – many of whom have serious moral and ethical objections to it – to foot the bill.

h/t Jill Stanek

A Little Stem Cell Research 101

ChelseaAdult Stem Cell Research, Embryonic Stem Cell Research, Stem Cell ResearchLeave a Comment

stemcellbasics.pngAdmittedly, it’s difficult to keep up with all of the threats to life and human dignity these days. We’re no longer talking just about abortion, but also several end of life issues and, of course, embryonic stem cell (ESC) research.

The science has been around for a good 20 years or more, but I’m sure there are quite a few people for whom ESC research is still relatively new and confusing. I encountered a lot of this during a 2006 campaign to make such research a constitutional right here in Missouri. If you’re one of those people or you know someone who could use a crash course in Stem Cell Research 101, I came across a few helpful posts recently:

    First, Morgan Witt has an excellent post covering stem cell research basics over at the Live Action blog. Check out: Stem Cell Research: The Basics Types of Research, Medical Status, and Ethical Drawbacks

    Also worth checking out: Rebecca Taylor wrote a great post responding to a reader who asked, Why Does the Church Oppose Embryonic Stem Cell Research? The visible head of the Church himself actually addressed this issue recently at an international stem cell conference.

As Morgan explains in her post, there is more than one type of stem cell research. ESCs get the most media attention and hype, but in reality, when it comes to regenerative medicine, adult stem cell (ASC) research is the one moving forward in leaps and bounds. In fact, while ASCs continue to have success in many human trials, last week the first ever human trial for ESCs was cancelled after about a year and the company conducting it has decided to abandon research using ESCs altogether. The Geron corporation cited financial difficulties as the reason for their decision, but many suspect that something must have gone wrong with the trial, or at least that it wasn’t going as well as they had hoped. Whatever the reason, this is, of course, wonderfully welcome news for those of us who oppose cannibalizing tiny human beings for science.

Some, even in the secular world, are wondering if this might finally spell the end of ESC research. Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves here. Research using human embryos is not going to go away completely because of one failed trial. Not only is our Federal Government more than willing to help keep it alive with our tax dollars, but many in the stem cell research field have predicted that the future of ESC research is not going to be in regenerative medicine anyway, but in pharmaceutical testing.

Other helpful links about the Geron news:
All the News That’s Fit to Forget: Why you’re not hearing much about embryonic stem cells these days
How big a blow was Geron’s bombshell that it is bailing on embryonic stem cell research? BIG.
Geron Quits the Embryonic Stem Cell Industry
Silently stealing away

Relic to Promote Motherhood, Discourage Contraception and Abortion in Russia

ChelseaAbortion, Contraception, Religion, videoLeave a Comment



Russia needs all the help they can get (h/t Fr. Shelton)

St. Francis de Sales, Pray for Me!

ChelseaPersonal, Pro Life2 Comments

catholiclane.pngDear readers – I’m excited to let you know that I’ve been asked to be an associate editor over at CatholicLane.com. I’ll be in charge of their Pro-Life and Catholic Bioethics sections. I started this week and I think I’m getting the hang of it. It’s mostly behind the scenes work, publishing other people’s stuff, though I will certainly be doing some writing there myself (you can read my stuff here). Catholic Lane is an excellent new website featuring many great writers and resources for Catholics. I’m really excited, nervous and grateful for this opportunity! I hope I do the site justice.
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Don’t worry, I still plan on keeping the Reflections of a Paralytic blog monster well fed. I’ve also been contributing to LifeNews.com a little bit lately and will be continuing that as well as try to contribute to Virtuous Planet once a month and keep up with the work I do for my parents and Missouri Right to Life. It’s actually not as much work as it sounds like. At least, it shouldn’t be. But I’m am not always the most organized/focused person in the world, so you’re prayers would be much appreciated!! I believe St. Francis de Sales is the patron saint of journalists/writers/editors…

Thanks for all your support. I love you all!

Miscarriage is the Loss of a ‘Real’ Child and Requires Compassion

ChelseaMiscarriageLeave a Comment



Fr. Frank Pavone recently wrote a lovely column about the need for compassion when helping someone who has experienced a miscarriage:
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Miscarriage is a tragedy that so many people misunderstand. They are not quite sure how to console a friend or relative who has suffered this loss.

While there are no magic formulas, there is one fundamental truth that needs to stay front and center: a miscarriage is the loss of a child who is just as real and has just as much value as any other child of any age. A woman who has a miscarriage is a parent who has lost a child, as is the father of the child as well.

In a society which continues to have a legal and cultural blind spot for the unborn, many suffer from the illusion that miscarriage doesn’t grieve a parent as much as the loss of, well, a “real child.” And that is precisely what hurts so much. We can never console someone in grief if we imply, even remotely, that the person they lost wasn’t real.

Read more

I can’t imagine what kind of person tells a mother that the child she lost in the womb wasn’t real. Mind you, we are presumably talking about a so-called “wanted” child, here, which even the most ardent abortion proponents will acknowledge as a living human being. But it happens.

Earlier this year, a woman I’m friends with suffered a miscarriage, her first, and was shocked to experience what she called “intimidation and minimization” from nurses throughout the process, combined with “vague, allusive, insensitive, de-humanizing descriptions about what I should expect during the course of my ‘labor.’” This inspired her to start a “Miscarriage Awareness Project” stillbirthday.pngthat has become the recently launched StillBirthday.com: “…because a pregnancy loss is still a birth day.”

Stillbirthday is a place for women experiencing or have experienced a miscarriage to find comfort and healing for their loss. There is also information on what to expect during a miscarriage that respects both the humanity of the unborn child and the sensitivities of the heartbroken mother and father. To find out more, ‘like’ them on Facebook or visit Stillbirthday.com

Geron Abandons Embryonic Stem Cell Research!

ChelseaEmbryonic Stem Cell ResearchLeave a Comment

geron.pngThis is huge, wonderful news! Geron Corp, the first company to get FDA approval for human trials with cells derived from embryonic stem cells has decided to shut down the trial they started last year and abandon embryonic stem cell research completely. From the NY Times:

The company conducting the world’s first clinical trial of a therapy using human embryonic stem cells said on Monday that it was halting that trial and leaving the stem cell business entirely.

The company, Geron, said that its move did not reflect a lack of promise for the controversial field. Rather, it said, with money scarce, it had decided to focus on its experimental cancer therapies, which are further along in development.

This underscores what many pro-lifers have been saying for years: private investors do not find ESC research to be a promising enough field to put their money into. That should really tell us something. And, yet, more than a few of our congressmen and women would just love to increase the amount of money that you, the taxpayer spend on it!

What about the patients of that first ESC trial? Again from the NYTimes:

So far four patients have been treated. Dr. Scarlett of Geron said that there were “no signs” that the treatment was helping the patients. But that was not expected in the initial trial, which was mainly looking at safety. And so far, he said, there had been no sign of safety problems.

Thank God there were no safety problems – something many of us were concerned about considering ESCs propensity to become cancerous or form deadly tumors and cysts. You want safety and treatments? Adult stem cells have not only been shown safe to use in humans, but have also proven to be effective in treating spinal cord injury (the injury Geron wass hoping to treat in this trial) for several years now, even some with long term injuries (the patients in Geron’s trial have new injuries) – see here, here, here, here, here and here for some examples.

Related:
Goodbye Dolly!

Pope Benedict: Science Must Never Compromise Human Dignity

ChelseaAdult Stem Cell Research, Embryonic Stem Cell Research, Stem Cell ResearchLeave a Comment

benedictASCs.pngOn Nov. 12 at the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace, Pope Benedict XVI addressed participants of the Nov. 9-11 international conference Adult Stem Cells: Science and the Future of Man and Culture.

The Holy Father opened his remarks with praise for the various institutions exploring and promoting research on adult stem cells. Adult stem cells hold great possibilities healing chronic degenerative illnesses by repairing damaged tissue and restoring its capacity for regeneration. These therapies, the Pope said, would be a great advancement for medical science as well as bring hope to many people who suffer and their families.

“For this reason, the Church naturally offers her encouragement to those who are engaged in conducting and supporting research of this kind, always with the proviso that it be carried out with due regard for the integral good of the human person and the common good of society.”

Man is both the “agent of scientific research,” and also “the object of that research,” the Pope noted. However, the “transcendent dignity” of man “entitles him always to remain the ultimate beneficiary of scientific research and never to be reduced to its instrument.” This, of course, is the problem with embryonic stem cell research. Embryos are human beings in the earliest stages of development and research using embryonic stem cells always involves the destruction of these nascent human lives.

“The destruction of even one human life can never be justified in terms of the benefit that it might conceivably bring to another.”

Science and ethics must be in dialogue with one another “to ensure that medical advances are never made at unacceptable human cost.” By calling for respect for the ethical limits of biomedical research, the pope said, the church does not seek to impede scientific progress, but to “guide it in a direction that is truly fruitful and beneficial to humanity.”

The conference Pope Benedict was speaking at was part of the Vatican’s $1 million dollar collaboration with US based biopharmaceutical company NeoStem’s Stem For Life Foundation to support research and increase public awareness of treatment using adult stem cells.

The pope concluded his address with a prayer that adult stem cell research “will bring great blessings for the future of man and genuine enrichment to his culture.”

Full text of the pope’s speech can be found here.

GA Supreme Court Hears Challenge to Assisted Suicide Law

ChelseaAssisted SuicideLeave a Comment

FEN.jpgIn 2010, four members of the assisted suicide advocacy group the Final Exit Network (FEN) were indicted in the state of Georgia for helping 58-year-old John Celmer kill himself two years after he had been diagnosed with cancer, though at the time his cancer was in remission.

Celmer died by asphyxiating on helium gas on June 19, 2008. The defendants say that two of them were present for support when Celmer committed suicide but did not help him do it. They later disposed of the helium tanks and “exit hood.” They were charged with violating the state’s assisted-suicide law, racketeering and tampering with evidence.

This Monday, in the state’s highest court, the defendants presented their case challenging the constitutionality of the assisted suicide law they were charged with violating, claiming that it violates the right to free speech. They also say that it does not really prohibit those who assist others committing suicide and that it is irrational for the law to allow someone to assist in a suicide but not to publicly advertise or offer that help.

The law, which was created in 1994 in response to Jack Kevorkian, who was making media headlines at the time for offering assisted suicide services out of the back of his van, reads thus:

(b) Any person who publicly advertises, offers, or holds himself or herself out as offering that he or she will intentionally and actively assist another person in the commission of suicide and commits any overt act to further that purpose is guilty of a felony and, upon conviction thereof, shall be punished by imprisonment for not less than one nor more than five years.

(c) Any person who knowingly and willfully commits any act which destroys the volition of another, such as fraudulent practices upon such person´s fears, affections, or sympathies; duress; or any undue influence whereby the will of one person is substituted for the wishes of another, and thereby intentionally causes or induces such other person to commit or attempt to commit suicide shall be guilty of a felony and, upon conviction thereof, shall be punished by imprisonment for not less than one nor more than ten years

In a press release on Monday, several disability rights groups urged the Supreme Court to uphold the prosecution of the FEN members and expressed their concern about the highly publicized “assistance” that members of the FEN are willing to give to old, ill and disabled people who want to commit suicide.

If you ask me, the law is oddly written and does seem a bit ambiguous as to whether assisted suicide is actually against the law or not. The Supreme Court’s ruling will determine if the case goes to trial. Whatever they decide, the Georgia Legislature would do well to go back to the drawing board and draft a real, clear ban on assisted suicide, or at least clean this statute up somehow.

To find out the law in your state regarding assisted suicide, check out the Patient Rights Council’s splended summary, “Assisted Suicide Laws in the United States.”

Happy Veterans’ Day!

ChelseaFamily, videoLeave a Comment

Last night I treated two of my friends to an early Veterans’ Day meal at a fabulous local German restaurant. Fr. Clarence (left) served as an Air Force chaplain during WWII and Vietnam and Wayne (back, right) served in the Army in Vietnam.

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God bless them and all of our veterans! As we continue to fight for life in a time of war, my prayers are especially with all of our men and women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan right now. R.I.P. Darin Thomas Settle and all who never made it home alive.

Vatican Hosts International Conference on Adult Stem Cell Research

ChelseaAdult Stem Cell ResearchLeave a Comment



Don’t ever let anyone tell you that the Catholic Church is “anti-science” or against stem cell research. Actually, she is very much in favor of stem cell research, so long as tiny human beings are not created, used and destroyed in the process, and now she’s putting her money where her mouth is with regard to that support.

ASCconference2.jpgThis week (November 9-11) the Vatican is hosting an international conference on adult stem cell research titled ‘Adult Stem Cells: Science and the Future of Man and Culture.’ The conference is part of the Vatican’s $1 million dollar collaboration with US based biopharmaceutical company NeoStem’s Stem For Life Foundation to support research and increase public awareness of treatment using adult stem cells. 350 scientists, religious figures, politicians, educators and industry representatives are scheduled to be in attendance.

At a press conference yesterday, Fr. Tomasz Trafny, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture’s science department, explained that the conference will seek both to publicize the achievements of medical science, and to reflect upon them from the perspective of the human sciences.

“We wish to raise some important and sometimes provocative questions”, he said, “such as whether the Hippocratic oath should be extended to all the life sciences, because today it is not only doctors but also laboratory scientists who have power to intervene in all phases of human life.”

Also at the conference, Dr Robin Smith, president of the Stem for Life Foundation and chief executive of NeoStem, explained how the use of adult stem cells avoids “the ethical dilemma posed by the use of embryonic stem cells. Adult stem cell research and therapy allows us to advance scientific knowledge while protecting every stage of existence”.

Adult stem cells can be found all throughout the body in places like bone marrow, blood, fat, skin, nasal tissue, etc… They are currently the only type of stem cell commonly used to treat human diseases and new breakthroughs are happening everyday. Click here to listen to an interview with Dr. Smith and to Fr. Trafny about the upcoming Vatican congress, the ethical debate, and this promising research.