Senate Finance Committee Rejects Pro-Life Amendments

ChelseaAbortion, Health Care, Legislation3 Comments

From LifeSiteNews:

The Senate Finance Committee torpedoed two key pro-life amendments on Wednesday designed to prevent government-subsidies of abortion and guarantee conscience protections for health-care providers in the health-care reform bill.

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) proposed to amend the “America’s Health Future Act of 2009” under consideration by the Finance Committee led by Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.). His amendments would have codified current conscience protections for health-care providers with moral objections to abortion and also made permanent the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal funds from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) from paying for abortions.

Hatch instead proposed that women could purchase additional coverage for abortions through “riders” that would not be subsidized by the government.

However, the amendments were rejected by the Committee by votes of 13 – 10. In both amendments, Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) joined committee Republicans in support of the measures, while pro-abortion Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) joined Baucus’ committee Democrats to vote against the bill.

In case you’re interested, over at the Missouri Right to Life blog I posted a detailed analysis from our legal counsel of the Baucus health care proposal and how it will promote abortion and fund abortion with public money:

The Baucus Plan and Abortion–part 1
The Baucus Plan and Abortion — Part II
The Baucus Plan and Abortion — Part III
The Baucus Plan and Abortion — Part IV (Final)

TOB Tuesday: Understanding Marriage

ChelseaMarriage, Theology of the Body, TOB Tuesday2 Comments

JP II beautifully explains the institution of marriage and what it symbolizes – something our modern society is trying its best to dismantle on a daily basis:

They key for understanding marriage remains the reality of the sign with which marriage is constituted on the basis of man’s covenant with God in Christ and the Church: is is constituted in the supernatural order of the sacred bond requiring grace. In this order, marriage is a visible and efficacious sign. Having originated in the mystery of creation, it draws its new origin from the mystery of redemption in order to serve the “union of the sons of God in truth and love” (Gaudium et Spes, 24:3). The liturgy of the sacrament of Marriage gives a form to that sign: directly, during the sacramental rite on the basis of the ensemble of its eloquent expressions; indirectly, throughout the whole of life. As spouses, the man and the woman bear this sign throughout the whole of their lives, and they remain this sign until death.
— John Paul II, General Audience of Jan. 5, 1983 TOB 103:7

Related: TOB Tuesday: The Call to Marriage

TOB Tuesdays

The Prayer of Pro-Lifers

ChelseaPrayer, Pro LifeLeave a Comment

O God, the Father and creator of human life, help us never to become discouraged in defending the full breadth of that most precious gift, from the miracle of fertilization to the spiritual serenity of a natural death. Inspire us to remember that without you we are powerless, and that what we do for the least, especially the helpless unborn dearest to you, we are actually doing for your Son, who lives and works in and through us. Protect us against the wiles and wickedness of the devil, “a murderer and a liar from the beginning.” May the Holy Spirit enlighten us along our daily way! Amen.

–Rev. Paul B. Marx, OSB

Project Chaste

ChelseaChastity, video1 Comment

It is easy to become cynical when we look at our depraved culture. But there are glimmers of hope for our future. These kids totally have their heads on straight:

Find out more

Parents, teachers, wake up! We must aim high for our children instead of just giving them condoms and telling them that they will inevitably fail. Kids are stronger than you think and they need your support and encouragement to respect the gift of their sexuality and to see and love with a pure heart.

Check out: Theology of the Body for Teens

Other resources:
If You Really Loved Me by Jason Evert
Pure Love Club

The Butterfly Circus Wins Grand Prize!!

ChelseaDisabled, Pro Life2 Comments



butterflycircus

Congratulations to The Butterfly Circus for winning the grad prize in the Doorpost Film Project contest!

For those who have seen this movie there is no doubt why it would win top honors. It’s not just a movie with a positive message, but a positive message about the beauty, dignity and sanctity of all human life. If you have not seen it yet it’s still available for viewing online. Click the image above.

Man Saved by Mechanical Heart, Own Stem Cells

ChelseaAdult Stem Cell Research1 Comment

This is totally awesome:

A DYING heart patient has been saved after he was given an artificial heart and injected with his own stem cells, a British surgeon said yesterday.

The procedure – believed to be a world first – used stem cells in attempts to rebuild the damaged muscle in the heart.

Experts welcomed the development, but said more research was necessary before it could be more widely used…

Mechanical hearts – also known as left ventricular assist devices (LVADs) – are currently used temporarily to support the failing hearts of people waiting for a transplant…

Mr Westaby (from Oxford’s John Radcliffe Hospital) said that the use of the patient’s own cells, extracted from his bone marrow, represented the first time the two treatments had ever been combined.

Read more

It’s pretty unbelievable what we can do to keep people alive these days…

The Best Voter Guide Ever Written

ChelseaPro Life, VotingLeave a Comment

Last weekend’s Values Voter Summit, at which many politicians, some 2012 presidential hopefuls, attempted to make their case to social conservative voters, reminds me of this advice from Archbishop Chaput from his book Render Unto Caesar:

The proof of a person’s faith is whether, how, and how much it shapes his or her behavior, public leadership included. That’s especially true when doing the right thing gets politically expensive…

It’s always best to assume the honesty and goodwill of other people, including the candidates for public office. It’s also fair to look for the evidence of what people say they believe. As Scripture says, “You will know them by their fruits” (Mt. 7:20). That’s the first and best voter guide ever written. And it’s one the Internal Revenue Service has not (yet) taken issue with. (p. 222)

I’m sure some of those guys made some great speeches, but when it comes to deciding who I’m going to vote for, I’m more interested in what they do/have done, in office.

ESCR: It’s Not Just About Finding Therapies and Cures

ChelseaEmbryonic Stem Cell Research2 Comments

Speaking of stem cell awareness, here are a few developments in embryonic stem cell research that you may not be aware of – but you should be.

This summer General Electric teamed up with Geron Corp. in order to use embryonic stem cells to develop products that could give drug developers an early warning of whether new medicines are toxic. GE Healthcare’s general manager Konstantin Fiedler is hopeful that this new way of testing drugs could eliminate the need for animal trials and testing:

“This could replace, to a large extent, animal trials,” Fiedler said in a telephone interview. “Once you have human cells and you can get them in a standardized way, like you get right now your lab rats in a standardized way, you can actually do those experiments on those cells.”

Also, Harvard Stem Cell Institute researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital have identified the earliest human cardiac master stem cells derived from human ESCs. This finding has researchers excited, not just because they think these cells could possibly be used to treat heart disease outright, but because they allow them to see how the human heart develops:

“Finding a cell that can make all the parts of the heart, including the contracting muscle, the smooth muscle and the vessels, brings us much closer to the possibility of repairing human hearts with new cells. In addition, this human progenitor cell will likely become the standard starting point for all researchers to aiming to investigate human heart development and genetic diseases of the cardiovascular system,” Melton (Doug , co-director of HSCI and co-chair of Harvard’s interschool Department of Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology) added…

Chien’s (Kenneth, director of both HSCI’s Cardiovascular Disease Program and the MGH Cardiovascular Research Center) group was particularly focused on answering the question of how the human heart expands from its small fetal size to its adult-form dimensions. “The human heart at birth is more than a thousand times bigger than the adult mouse heart, yet the size of the initial embryos are close in size. Humans are just a heck of a lot bigger than mice, and every organ is bigger. How is that achieved?”

Drug testing, organ/disease development study, in an interview with Forbes last May these are the kinds of things that stem cell researcher James Thompson predicted would be the real future of ESCR:

I really believe personally that the value of these cells is not in transplantation. It’s hard to predict the future, but my guess is 20 years from now if you look backwards, 90% of the value of these cells will be in things that don’t make the front pages. It will be things like drug screening, which is kind of boring, but it does get drugs to market that are safer and faster…

These cells suddenly give us access to all the bits of the human body we’ve never had access to. That’s going to lead to understanding why certain cells are dying, and more traditional therapies are likely to prevent them from dying. Parkinson’s, if you can diagnose somebody early in the course of that disease and arrest it, that’s as good as a cure. And that I think is fairly probable.

To the general public ESCR continues to be hyped for its potential use in regenerative medicine – and it’s certainly being conducted for that purpose (with little success) – but don’t think that’s the only thing researchers want to use it for. Let’s face it, human embryos have become a hot commodity and, as Wesley Smith put it recently:

We have entered an “anything goes” era, in which there are no permanent boundaries, and where science is becoming an end, not just a means

Yes, and tiny human beings are paying for it with their lives. God help us.

Mad Scientists!

ChelseaCloning3 Comments

This is truly frightening. In the UK a new rule may allow scientists to create cloned human/animal embryos with patient’s donated tissue without their consent:

Tens of thousands of samples of human tissue will be offered for use in controversial human/animal hybrid embryo research without the consent of the patients who donated them. New rules coming into force next month will give scientists working on stem cell research access to samples of blood and tissue collected by NHS hospitals during biopsies and treatments, as well as to giant “tissue banks” which built up stores of material before the legislation was introduced.

Ethics experts, patients’ groups and churches described the change as “absolutely frightening” and liable to destroy trust among thousands who donate, whatever their views on the use of hybrid embryos for stem cell research.

While scientists will have to try to gain explicit consent before using cells from such stores, if the samples were collected before 1st October and the donor cannot be tracked down, the experiments will be allowed to go ahead regardless.

What kind of warped thinking makes something like this seem acceptable even for a moment? It’s becoming increasingly clear that for scientists these days, nothing really is off limits.

It’s sometimes hard to keep up on all the latest threats to human life in the world today, but this new area of biotechnology demands our attention. It may sound like pure fantasy (cloning, really??) but it’s happening now – right here in our own country!

Related: in a recent column for Wired, Gregg Easterbrook says we should embrace human cloning to help the infertile pass on their genes (h/t Mary Meets Dolly).

Happy Stem Cell Awareness Day!

ChelseaAdult Stem Cell ResearchLeave a Comment

Today is Stem Cell Awareness Day as proclaimed by Governors Arnold Scwartzenegger of California and Jim Doyle of Wisconsin (h/t Mary Meets Dolly). So check out some of the latest advancements in adult stem cell research:

Neuralstem Receives FDA Approval to Commence First ALS Stem Cell Trial:

ROCKVILLE, Md., Sept. 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Neuralstem, Inc. (NYSE Amex: CUR) today announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved its Investigational New Drug (IND) application to commence a Phase I trial to treat Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS or Lou Gehrig’s disease) with its spinal cord stem cells.

British surgeons are pioneering a new technique which uses stem cells to repair damaged bones. This research could help prevent the need for artificial hip replacements.

Study reveals benefit of adult stem cells for acute lung injury:

UCSF scientists have demonstrated that adult human mesenchymal stem cells reverse the effects of injury in a novel human lung preparation in the lab. The finding, they say, could lead to the development of stem cell therapies for patients with acute lung injury and acute respiratory distress syndrome, conditions that presently have a high rate of mortality and no pharmacological treatments.

UW-Madison researcher saved by stem cells. Kurt Saupe is is cancer-free after receiving a bone marrow transplant for acute lymphoblastic leukemia, a rare and lethal disease among middle age adults.

“Liposuction leftovers” easily converted to iPS cells:

Globs of human fat removed during liposuction conceal versatile cells that are more quickly and easily coaxed to become induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, than are the skin cells most often used by researchers, according to a new study from Stanford’s School of Medicine.

Positive Results in the MARVEL Phase II/III Clinical Trial for patients with heart failure. According to this story the stem cells were derived from the patients’ leg muscles.

And here are a few articles highlighting some research facilities specifically working to advance ethical stem cell research:

Adult stem cell research creating miracles in Covington:

In the emerging field of adult stem cell therapy, Drs. Gabriel Lasala and Jose Minguell of TCA Cellular Therapy, LLC, are conducting ground breaking innovative research into the regenerative properties of adult stem cells.

“This is like penicillin was a century ago,” said Lasala about his research.

A visit to their facility in Covington is like meeting Louis Pasteur when he proved the germ theory of disease. Working through scientific protocols and funding their studies themselves, Lasala and Minguell have successful treated limb ischemia or peripheral vascular disease, saving people from amputation surgery due to gangrene from diabetes.

They have successfully treated cardiac and other vascular conditions as well.

Tulane enters into agreement to produce adult stem cells (see here as well)

Adult stem cells derived from bone marrow avoid the ethical debate that surrounds embryonic stem cells and may be the future of regenerative medicine. Tulane University is recognized as a leader in the production of adult stem cells for research use.

Stemnion uses placentas, not embryos, to get stem cells for burn therapy:

The company obtains its stem cells from placentas of full-term newborns born at Magee-Womens Hospital of UPMC. Placentas, usually discarded after births, are a rich source of stem cells that can be coaxed to accelerate healing by simply being sprinkled onto a wound, Strom said.

Scientists are working to make stem cells catalyze the growth of more specialized tissues, by draping them on biodegradable frameworks in the shape of tissues and organs.