Life is Worth LIVING!!

ChelseaEuthanasia, Right to Life, Suffering1 Comment

christinaayers.jpgThe National Catholic Register has an article about the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada’s recommendation that all pregnant women be tested for “chromosomal abnormality.” This is their equivalence to the American OBGYN’s similar suggestion, only the Americans specifically mentioned “Down Syndrome” as the target. The article’s line that pro-life groups say, “it is hostile to people with Down in particular and physically or mentally challenged persons generally” reminded me of a post that Wesley Smith had a few weeks ago called “That Nazi Thing.” In it he quotes from Dr. Leo Alexander’s famous article “Medical Science Under Dictatorship.” It was published in the New England Journal of Medicine on July 14, 1949 and discussed the medical foundation of the Nazi Holocaust and what motivated physicians to judge that there is “such a thing as life not worthy to be lived.”

He said that the crimes “started from small beginnings. The beginnings at first were merely a subtle shift in emphasis in the basic attitude of the physicians. It started with the lacceptance of the attitude, basic in the euthanasia movement, that there is such a thing as life not worthy to be lived.” It began with the chronically ill and severely handicapped and grew to eventually include all non-Germans.

He also gave a warning based on the culture of American medicine in 1949:

“In an increasingly utilitarian society these patients [with chronic diseases] are being looked down upon with increasing definiteness as unwanted ballast. A certain amount of rather open contempt for the people who cannot be rehabilitated with present knowledge has developed. This is probably due to a good deal of unconscious hostility, because these people for whom there seem to be no effective remedies, have become a threat to newly acquired delusions of omnipotence… At this point, Americans should remember that the enormity of the euthanasia movement is present in their own midst.”

Indeed we are seeing this trend in America as we speak, especially with the Euthenasia or “right-to-die” movement for chronically ill and elderly patients. Now American OBGYNs want to give parents the option to abort a child that may have Down Syndrome even though these people can become productive members of society and bring joy and love to those they meet:

Dale Froese, an adult with Down syndrome, told the Calgary press conference, “It hurts to think that one day any group of people might be eliminated from the human race. People with Down syndrome are doing great things today. Some of us are married, go to university, have important jobs and have family and friends who depend on us.”

We may be only talking about aborting disabled infants in-utero, but that has the potential to lead to the type of infanticide we see discussed in Europe with doctors wanting to kill severely handicapped babies. And as the euthanasia movement expands the physically and mentally handicapped will join the elderly and terminally ill as suitable candidates. Americans with disabilities are still looked down upon despite all the strides we have made to welcome them into society. The push for cloning and ESC research is made with the idea that people who suffer terrible diseases and disabilities need to be cured in order to have a greater “quality of life,” to have lives more worth living – as if merely being human and being alive isn’t enough.

me3.jpgAt the Senate Judiciary hearing for a bill to ban cloning two years ago in Missouri, I vividly remember a man who was testifying, who had, himself, spent time in a wheelchair, point a finger back at me as someone whose “quality of life” has been diminished because I am forced to live life in a wheelchair. I was shocked and outraged. I am a human being! I wanted to shout. My quality of life does not depend on my ability to walk! I am a daughter, a sister, a friend and, God willing, will someday be a wife and a mother. I laugh at jokes and cry at happy endings. I am a hopeless romantic but I love war movies. I like to listen to movie soundtracks on my i-pod at home, but rock n roll (specifically the Beatles and Led Zeppelin) in my car. My greatest desire is to love and serve my God and my neighbor. And I am not “forced” to live my life in a wheelchair. I embrace my wheelchair, as Christ embraced His cross because I know that as a child of God I am made in His image and likeness and my life has meaning.

Life itself, even a life of suffering, should be cherished as a gift from God, for we know that our sufferings will not last forever. “Behold, the dwelling of God is with men. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away.” (Rev. 21: 3-4)

Troubled Iowa Dreams

ChelseaCloningLeave a Comment

Richard Doerflinger, the deputy director of the Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has an article on National Review about the recent decision by Iowa lawmakers to overturn a previous cloning ban. The language they adopted resembles what was done in Missouri with Amendment 2 – banning the implantation or attempted implantation of a cloned human embryo into a woman’s uterus, or a substitute uterus, for the purpose of birth.

Doerflinger makes some pretty good points. Like the use of sick people to advance this research:

For as the bill went from senate to house, Governor Chet Culver declared that “it’s really up to the 100 state representatives now to decide if they want to give hope and opportunity to tens of thousands of people.”

Who are these tens of thousands of people? A hint of an answer is that Culver said this at a press conference surrounded by parents of children with juvenile diabetes, who spoke about a “cure” for their children’s illness.

It is worth asking: Have these parents ever read anything about cloning and juvenile diabetes — or are they being misled and used? Even the most vigorous proponents of human cloning for research purposes, such as Ian Wilmut (head of the team that created Dolly), admit that stem cells from cloned embryos will not treat juvenile diabetes. The reason is simple: Any embryo cloned from a child with juvenile diabetes (and any stem cells from that embryo) would be an exact genetic match to the child, and thus have exactly the same genetic profile that provoked the illness in the first place.

and the complete ignorance of our politicians:

Are treatments for other conditions on the horizon from cloned human embryos? No. Attempts to achieve the first essential step in so-called “therapeutic cloning” — simply making a human embryo by this technique and obtain usable stem cells — have all been failures. In the most recent case, involving the team of Hwang Woo-suk in South Korea, the researchers compounded their failure with fraudulent claims of success over the course of two years, and they now face criminal and other charges. As the New York Times noted last January: “The technique for cloning human cells, which seemed to have been achieved since March 2004, now turns out not to exist at all, forcing cloning researchers back to square one.” And square one is where the field has remained since then.

So one can only shake one’s head in amazement at what Culver’s predecessor, Tom Vilsack (now a Democratic presidential candidate), said when he kicked off the campaign against Iowa’s cloning ban in his last “State of the State” speech last year. Vilsack said that when he signed the ban on what he calls “nuclear cell transplants” in 2002, “we never dreamt that new treatments dependent upon such transplants would be developed so quickly. Well, they have been, and as a result we should revisit our ban on nuclear cell transplants. We should remove the restrictions and allow life saving treatments to be administered to Iowans here in Iowa rather than forcing them to leave our state…”

Treatments? Developed quickly? On what planet does the Iowa governor’s mansion actually reside?

Ironically, Americans have indeed been forced by the current political climate to go elsewhere for groundbreaking stem-cell treatments — to Germany, Thailand, Portugal, etc. They have gone to these places for promising new clinical trials using adult stem cells, because so many of our local politicians (including, apparently, two Iowa governors in a row) are fixated on fantasies about cloning.

Cloning for research is just that, fantasy, but more importantly it is yet another symptom of the selfish, pro-death mentality of modern society. As I noted in an earlier post, all it took for people to warm up to the idea of human cloning was the promise of relieving the great burden of disease and suffering. As long as we remain unwilling to accept (and even embrace) human suffering, any atrocity which holds a promise to alleviate such pain will be acceptable, even the destruction of innocent human life.

David Prentice Refutes Attacks in Science Journal

ChelseaAdult Stem Cell Research, ScienceLeave a Comment

The journal Science has published a letter by Dr. David Prentice, the founding member of the DoNoHarm Coalition, and its communications director about treating diseases with adult stem cells. Last July Science published an article attacking Dr. Prentice and DoNoHarm for its claim that over 72 diseases have been treated with adult stem cells. It was published right before congress first voted to expand funding for ESC research. I can’t access either of the letters from Science because a paying membership is required, but here is what the DoNoHarm website has to say:

The authors of the original attack piece judged claims by Prentice that adult stem cells had helped human patients for the diseases and conditions listed as “simply untenable.” But as the current rebuttal points out, two of the original authors, William Neaves and Steven Teitelbaum, are themselves “founding members of a political group whose Web site lists over 70 conditions that ‘could someday be treated or cured’ using embryonic stem cells.” Moreover, the rebuttal further notes, this Neaves/Teitelbaum list “is based on no evidence of benefit in any human patient from embryonic stem cells and little evidence for its claims in animal models.” While the Prentice/Tarne rebuttal calls for “careful scrutiny” of all scientific claims regarding stem cells, it further notes that such scrutiny “should be directed equally to all sides.”

It also says that the Dr.’s letter is accompanied by a comprehensive online supplement documenting — from the peer-reviewed scientific literature — evidence of therapeutic benefit to human patients who have received an adult stem cell (including cord blood stem cell) treatment for the diseases listed on its website. This part is accessible and you can find it here: Supporting Online Material for “Treating Diseases with Adult Stem Cells”.

No doubt publications like Science, who actively promote ESC and cloning research, would like to ignore or at least downplay the number advancements made using adult stem cells, but it is just simply irresponsible to do so, especially when they list the same number of potential treatments that could maybe one day be achieved using ESCs.

A Decade After Dolly

ChelseaCloning, Pro Life, Right to LifeLeave a Comment

dolly.jpgNature magazine has an article out reviewing the cloning debate 10 years after Dolly was cloned. The gist of the article is that the cloning debate shifted away from reproductive cloning (to create baby) and now focuses on “therapeutic” or research cloning (to create human embryos for research).

“What really took place is that the stem-cell debate replaced the cloning debate,” says Caplan. “Because there was — and is — a tremendous interest in trying to clone embryos, not people.”

The South Korean scandal of Seoul National University’s Woo Suk Hwang, whose claims to have derived stem-cell lines from cloned human embryos were proved to be fraudulent in 2006, generated plenty of bad press for the field. But there are signs that the new debate is taking a different course from that on reproductive cloning because of the potential of stem-cell research to improve human health.

In the United States, for example, opposition to cloning babies has remained firm through a decade of polling, at about 90%, but polls in recent years have shown that 60–70% of the public supports research using stem cells obtained from discarded embryos in fertility clinics.

“As people learn about the possibilities for new approaches to disease, they see the embryonic stem-cell issue in a different framework,” says Jonathan Moreno, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania, who co-chaired a committee that crafted 2005 research guidelines for the US National Academies. “They see it as medical research that could help them or their families.”

VOILA! Start promissing the public cures for every known disability and disease and human cloning, once an unthinkable possibility, easily becomes acceptable science. In order for us to see the value of human life from its very beginning we have to be willing to look past the pain and suffering of this life. The desire to end disease and affliction is always good, but it must not come at the cost of innocent human life.

Check out Wesley Smith’s recent post: The Stampede of the Cloning Herd

Love and Be Loved

ChelseaPersonal, Prayer, ReligionLeave a Comment

prodigal.jpg“This is the great mystery of our faith. We do not choose God, God chooses us. From all eternity we are hidden ‘in the shadow of God’s hand’ and ‘engraved in his palm.’ Before any human being touches us, God ‘forms us in secret’ and ‘textures us ‘ in the depth of the earth, and before any human being decides about us, God ‘knits us together in our mother’s womb.’ God loves us before any human person can show love to us. He loves us with a ‘first’ love, an unconditional love, wants us to be his beloved children, and tells us to become as loving as himself…

God has been trying to find me, to know me, and to love me. The question is not ‘How am I to find God?’ but ‘How am I to let myself be found by Him?’ The question is not ‘How am I to know God?’ but ‘How am I to let myself be known by him?’ And finally, the question is not ‘How am I to love God?’ but ‘How am I to let myself be loved by Him?'”

This is an excerpt from my spiritual reading this evening in The Return of the Prodigal Son by Henri J.M. Nouwen. I thought it was appropriate for the beginning on Lent and wanted to share it with you all. The greatest challenge of the spiritual life is not to love God, but to allow ourselves to be loved by Him. Not to ask for forgiveness, but to let go of our sins and allow ourselves to be forgiven. This Lent, through fasting and prayer we reflect on the emptiness of our lives without God. Let us also reflect on His great mercy and forgiveness and his desire to love us lavishly.

God bless you all this Lenten season!

Restore Us to a Culture of Life

ChelseaFamily, Marriage, Prayer, Pro Life, Religion, Right to Life, VocationLeave a Comment

DENVER, February 21, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver, Colorado commenced the Lenten season today, Ash Wednesday, by issuing a message to his diocese reminding the faithful “As we offer our prayers to God this Lent, let’s ask Him to restore us as a culture of life — a culture committed to the sanctity of every life, from the unborn child to the mentally disabled, the infirm and the elderly, and yes, even the condemned criminal.”

Let us especially pray for the conversion of the faithful to embrace God’s gift of life and human sexuality. Something like 96% of Catholic couples practice artificial contraception and a good majority of couples cohabitate prior to getting married. It seems that Catholic families are getting smaller and smaller and the divorce rate mirrors the national average. The re-birth of a culture of life depends on the re-birth of good, holy marriage and family vocations totallly open to the gift of life. That is my special intention this Lent.

Romney Stands Firm on Embryo Issue

ChelseaCloning, Embryonic Stem Cell Research, Politics, Pro LifeLeave a Comment

romney.jpgMitt Romney, whose wife is diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, is staunchly opposed to ESC research and is sticking to his position. Supposedly it was this issue that brought him see the light on other life issues. I have not been one to criticize Romney’s pro-life conversion because I knew about his position on ESC research a few years ago. Cal Thomas interviewed the then-Governor about his position back in February of 2005:

Massachusetts Republican Gov. Mitt Romney has infuriated Harvard scientists by declaring his opposition to stem cell research on embryos created for this purpose. “Some of the practices that Harvard and probably other institutions in Massachusetts are engaged in cross the line of ethical conduct,” Romney told The New York Times.

In a telephone conversation, Romney told me he thinks the Harvard scientists have “pulled a bait and switch.” At first, he says, they agreed that enough stem cells could be obtained from discarded embryos at fertilization clinics, which did not present an ethical problem to him because such embryos would be destroyed anyway. But the scientists are now lobbying for creating and cloning embryos simply for experimental purposes. This he opposes.

The radically “pro-choice” New York Times, which rarely credits any pro-lifer with standing on principle, suggests Romney may be taking this position to curry favor with social conservatives so he might pursue higher office.

It is difficult to take such cynicism seriously when one considers that Romney’s wife, Ann, suffers from multiple sclerosis, a disease that backers of stem cell research claim might be cured if they are permitted to do whatever they wish to embryos. That the Romneys would put their principles ahead of self-interest is rare in politics.

Romney says he has been told by medical and scientific authorities that sufficient stem cells exist or can be obtained from fertility clinics and other sources to avoid therapeutic cloning and the destruction of embryos created specifically for this type of research. “Creating human life for research and human experimentation is ethically wrong,” he told me.

(The rest of the article, Stemming Stem Cell Research, is really fabulous and worth reading.)

I think it is clear that his position on ESC research is genuine, which leads me to believe that his pro-life conversion might be too.

“Her Prognosis is Excellent”

ChelseaPro Life, Right to LifeLeave a Comment

tiny-baby.jpgThose were the words of Dr. Paul Fassbach who has cared for Amillia Sonja Taylor, the first baby to survive outside the womb after a gestation period of fewer than 23 weeks (she was born after just over 21 weeks). The doctors have changed their minds about letting her go home today, but she is still a miracle baby! Let’s pray that she will live a long and healthy life!

Media Cover-up of Ethical Stem Cell Sources

ChelseaAdult Stem Cell Research, Embryonic Stem Cell Research, Pro Life, Right to Life, Stem Cell ResearchLeave a Comment

Michael Fumento has a great piece about the media’s dismal coverage of the amniotic fluid stem cell discovery lately. A summary:

Adult stem cells cure and treat more 70 diseases and are involved in almost 1,300 human clinical trials. Scientists also keep discovering that adult stem cells are capable of creating a wider variety of mature cells. Perhaps the most promising of these was announced in the January issue of Nature Biotechnology.

Anthony Atala, director of the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, reported that stem cells in the amniotic fluid that fills the sac surrounding the fetus may be just as versatile as embryonic stem cells. At the same time they maintain all the advantages that have made adult stem cells such a success…

Some embryonic stem cell researchers have downplayed the Atala findings. The work will “still require a lot of replication from other groups before they can be conclusive,” Stephen Minger, an embryonic stem cell scientist identified only as a “lecturer in stem-cell biology” told a British newspaper. “They have only shown that these particular stem cells can turn into a couple of different types of other stem cells. I would say that a hell of a lot more work is required.” Other media outlets would say the same. Newsweek International claimed, “Many scientists are quick to emphasize that comprehensive human trials are still many years away.”

The New York Times refused even to allow people to read between the lines–they simply never reported the news about Atala’s work. When a reader complained to the “Public Editor,” an online ombudsman, about the omission, the Times responded that its genetics reporter, Nicholas Wade, “looked at the Atala paper last week and deemed it a minor development.” Wade said of the paper, “It reports finding ‘multipotent’ stem cells in amniotic fluid. Multipotent means they can’t do as much as bona fide embryonic stem cells (which are called ‘pluripotent’).”

Neither Minger nor Newsweek nor Wade could be more wrong. As Atala told PBS’s Online NewsHour, “We have been able to drive the cell to what we call all three germ layers, which basically means all three major classes of tissues available in the body, from which all cells come from.” I pointed out in a response to the New York Times posting that merely reading the online abstract of the Atala paper indicated the same. Of course, this is the same paper that told readers in 2004 that there were no cures or treatments with adult stem cells. Not 70 cures or treatments, some dating back half a century–none.

It is neither paranoia nor exaggeration to say that the New York Times is engaged in a stem-cell cover-up.

WHAT MAKES all of this worse is that Atala’s work actually is a replication of numerous studies. He’s just taken the research further and pulled his cells from amniotic fluid, whereas others have pulled the identical cells from the placenta. Amniotic and placenta stem cells are the same, as Atala himself noted. And as to human trials being “many years away,” Newsweek is correct only if “years away” means “years ago.”

The New England Journal of Medicine carried one paper on a placenta stem cell trial back in 1996 and another paper two years later. There’s been one ongoing clinical trial since 2001 to treat sickle cell anemia…

Scientifically, all embryonic stem cells tend to become cancerous; they require permanent, dangerous, immunosuppressive drugs because the body rejects them as foreign; and they are difficult to differentiate into the needed type of mature cells. Non-embryonic stem cells, however, do not become cancerous; they are far less likely to cause rejection (especially the youngest, including umbilical cord and amniotic/placenta); and they have been used therapeutically since the late 1950s (originally for leukemia) because they have the amazing ability to form the right type of mature cell merely upon being injected into a body that needs that type of cell.

It is these biological differences that have held embryonic stem cell research back, not a lack of federal funds.

This doesn’t do justice to the whole article which can be found at the LifeNews website: Media Continues Cover-Up of Alternative, Ethical Stem Cell Sources. The media and political bias in favor of ESC research is outrageous, especially when you consider that adult or non-embryonic stem cell research is doing today what they claim ESCs will do sometime in the future. Sadly, it is a fact that the MSM would be championing these breakthroughs if they came at the cost of innocent human life.

Women Will Be Paid to Donate Eggs for Science

ChelseaEgg Harvesting, IVF, Science, Stem Cell Research, WomenLeave a Comment

egg-donor.jpgAnd you thought advertising for egg donations on college campuses by fertility clinics was bad enough. Now women will be coaxed into undergoing this dangerous and potentially deadly procedure in the name of science!

Women “will be paid £250 plus travel expenses, the existing maximum compensation for any egg or sperm donor.” But don’t worry, lest you think the women are doing it just for the money, “Anyone agreeing to donate will have to show that they are acting for altruistic reasons, for example because they have a close relative suffering with one of the conditions scientists are trying to develop new treatments for with the aid of human eggs.” WHEW! That’s a relief.

They’re also apparently signing up to potentially be a martyr for the cause since the drugs that they use to hyperstimulate the ovaries “were found by the scientists to cause paralysis and could lead to limb amputation and even death.” Actually this little fact will most likely be downplayed as meaningless if mentioned at all. And let’s not forget the potential exploitation of poor women, despite attempts to ensure that women doing this would do so for purely altruistic reasons – gimme a break!

Visit: Hands Off Our Ovaries

Thanks, Greg!