FDA Approves Human Trial of Treatment Derived From ESCs

ChelseaEmbryonic Stem Cell ResearchLeave a Comment

The headline: FDA OKs First Human Trials of Embryonic Stem Cells. Note, this treatment will not consist in the direct infusion of human embryonic stem cells, but of neurons derived from ESCs:

Starting this summer, the biotech firm Geron will treat a small group of spinal-cord injury patients using neurons derived from stem cells, marking the first time embryonic stem cells will be tested in humans.

The trial is designed to test the safety of the treatment, not how well it works. Nonetheless, it’s a huge first step for the field…

Working in a handful of medical centers around the country, Geron will treat eight to 10 recent paraplegics, who can use their arms but not their legs. The patients will receive an injection of neurons to the site of the damage, followed by a short treatment of anti-rejection drugs.

Previous animal studies suggest the new neurons will repair damaged neurons and secrete substances to help nerves function and grow.

This kind of treatment may be a way to try to get around the serious complications that have plagued the direct injection of ESCs for decades. But even if the trial succeeds – and we certainly don’t wish any harm on the trial patients – and the treatment is later also proven effective, it remains unethical to use and destroy human life for any kind of medical treatments. Pray that more people understand this.

P.S. What you don’t hear from the above story regarding this first clinical trial with ESCs is that adult stem cells have been proven both safe and effective in multiple clinical trials for human patients with spinal cord injury. Watch video testimony from Jacki Rabon whose spinal cord injury improved after she was injected with stem cells from her own nose in this trial from Portugal that lead to further human trials in several other countries. See more patients treated with ASCs for SCI here, here and here.

36 Years and 49 MILLION Abortions

ChelseaPro LifeLeave a Comment

nullIt’s been well over an hour and pro-life marchers are still making their way up Constitution Ave. in Washington D.C. – a great sign that the number of people witnessing for life is still huge. I’ve been watching the live coverage on EWTN (you can’t see it anywhere else!!) and the crowd certainly looks massive – and YOUNG!!! The beautiful thing about the March for Life is the focus on not just respect for the unborn, but love for the men and women affected by abortion. The Silent No More Awareness Campaign always has a very prominent role at the march and their message speaks volumes for how abortion impacts the souls of those who have experienced it.

I wasn’t able to attend the march this year so I’ll be memorializing Roe v. Wade at home in MO. I spent nullthis morning at our state Capitol with other members of Missouri Right to Life handing out roses for life to all of the state legislators. Each legislator received a red rose with a card that read:

Every child, like the rose, is an autograph from the hand of God

The rose’s beauty and perfection is evidenced while still just a tiny bud, which gradually matures to be the most beautiful of all flowers.

Every human being was once a tiny bud, unseen, but nevertheless the wondrous work of God.

–Missouri Right to Life

Tonight we will have a pro-life Mass at the Cathedral and collect material for our local crisis pregnancy centers. There will also be a rosary for life at the state Capitol here in Jeff City tomorrow at noon.

God bless all of our marchers and everyone involved in the pro-life movement. Let us continue to fight for the rights of the unborn and pray for an end to legally sanctioned abortion in the United States of America!

Bush Was a Stem Cell Leader

ChelseaStem Cell Research2 Comments

Reader (and now fellow blogger) Brian Gillin recently had an op-ed published in the Washington Times in which he thanks Pres. Bush for his help in advancing stem cell science – that’s right, advancing it:

Thank you, President Bush, for not allowing science to be divorced from ethics. In 2001, you struck a balance on embryonic stem-cell research, limiting the millions of federal funding toward that field of study to those stem-cell lines already created, from human embryos already destroyed. You also devoted generous amounts of funding to studying adult stem cells which have already treated thousands of actual human patients, and signed an executive order for more study of “alternative” methods of obtaining stem cells. Your opponents mischaracterized your view as “religious,” and reviled your policy as “anti-science” (or, worse, as “anti-cure”), but the positive results speak otherwise.

A little more than a year ago, scientists successfully reprogrammed ordinary adult cells to an embryonic-like state – one of the “alternative” methods you had outlined. Many researchers are now turning away from embryonic research and toward these induced pluripotent cells – for reasons of both ethics and practicality. Your policy did not impede research; it helped it to advance.

Sadly this will not be his legacy in the eyes of many, but it’s the truth. Because of his fidelity to the sanctity of human life and ethics in science, he’s characterized, as Brian says, of being “anti-science” and “setting our country back” in the area of stem cell research when in fact his policies helped bring about one of the biggest breakthroughs in stem cell science to date. A breakthrough that is not only more ethical, but already proving to be more productive than research using human embryos. Meanwhile Congress (not to mention his successor) still insists on pushing to increase funding for stem cell research that, even if it one day overcame its serious complications and cured the deadliest disease known to man (unlikely, to say the least), would be so tainted by its use and destruction of nascent human life that it would not be much of an advancement for science or the world.

See also:
Cloning pioneer Ian Wilmut to pursue non-ESCR
ESCR pioneer James Thompson to pursue non-ESCR

Pray for our President and Pro-Life Pilgrims!

Chelsea2008 Election, Activism, Politics, PrayerLeave a Comment

    President Obama

Now more than ever our new president, officially sworn in yesterday, needs to be prayed for. All indications are that, with the cooperation of Congress, he will work to actively advance the culture of death in the American government beginning with, many believe, an order to abolish the Mexico City policy, thereby allowing U.S. foreign aide to be given to groups that lobby for more liberal abortion laws globally. According to LifeSiteNews, a source claimes that this order could coincide with the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade tomorrow when hundreds of thousands of pro-life pilgrims will be marching for life, for an end to abortion, in Washington D.C.

Albert Mohler offers this prayer for president Obama

Speaking of the March for Life; do keep our pro-life pilgrims in prayer – most of whom are traveling as we speak. Two buses from the Jefferson City, MO diocese where I’m from left around 7:30 last night and should get into D.C. sometime in the next few hours:

March for Life Bus
March for Life Bus

Prayer to St. Raphael for travelers:

St. Raphael, archangel, you protected young Tobiah as he journeyed to a distant land. Protect all travelers and most especially those who are going out to preach the Gospel. Guide and inspire modern apostles who use the communications media to bring the Good News of Christ to many souls. You also brought healing and joy to all you met. Help those who bring the Word of God to souls, that they may be as instruments in God’s Hands to draw many to lives of Christian holiness.

We ask this through Christ, Our Lord. Amen.

TOB Tuesday: Glorify God in your Body

ChelseaReligion, Theology of the Body, TOB TuesdayLeave a Comment

I came up with the subject for this week’s TOB (Theology of the Body) Tuesday after listening to the second reading at Mass this Sunday:

1 Cor 6:13c-15a, 17-20

Brothers and sisters:
The body is not for immorality, but for the Lord,
and the Lord is for the body;
God raised the Lord and will also raise us by his power.

Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?
But whoever is joined to the Lord becomes one Spirit with him.
Avoid immorality.
Every other sin a person commits is outside the body,
but the immoral person sins against his own body.
Do you not know that your body
is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you,
whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?
For you have been purchased at a price.
Therefore glorify God in your body

Did you know that the body was so important? This is at the heart of JP II’s Theology of the Body.

There is a modern sort of dualism these days that suggests that human beings are essentially made up of two separate natures – we have a body and a soul and what we do with one doesn’t necessarily have to do with the other – mostly, what we do with our bodies isn’t nearly as important as our souls or who we are inside. (Case in point: a former priest friend of mine was having a conversation one day with a girl who described herself as an “exotic dancer.” When he asked her how she felt about men using her for their own selfish gratification, she said, “oh, they’re not using me, just my body.” In other words, her body and her stripping had nothing to do with who she was as a person.)

But man is an incarnate spirit with one human nature. In his Letter to Families, JP II explains that man

“is a person in the unity of his body and his spirit. The body can never be reduced to mere matter: it is a spiritualized body, just as man’s spirit is so closely united to the body that he can be described as an embodied spirit”

Death may separate the body and soul, but this is not the be all and end all of human life. Hot on the heels of Christ’s glorious second coming, all of the dead are destined for the resurrection of their bodies in which their souls will once again dwell for all eternity!

There is a reason they say “actions speak louder than words.” That is because it is precisely our bodies and what we do with them that reveal “who we are on the inside” and much more! The pope writes:

“The body, in fact, and only the body, is capable of making visible what is invisible: the spiritual and the divine. It has been created to transfer into the visible reality of the world the mystery hidden from eternity in God, and thus to be a sign of it.” (TOB 19:4)

Here is how Christopher West demonstrates it during his talks (note: what’s cut off at the beginning of the clip is West telling the audience to “look at Paul’s body”)

The body matters. What we do with our bodies matters. This is especially true in light of the mystery of the Word made flesh. In Christ the “whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (Colossians 2:9). Through this fact, the Pope says, the human body “entered theology…through the main door” (TOB 23:4)

Read more:
What Makes the Body “Theological”?
The Resurrection of Our Bodies
What is the Theology of the Body & Why is it Changing so Many Lives?

Obama May Not Use Executive Order on Stem Cell Funding

ChelseaEmbryonic Stem Cell Research, Politics1 Comment

President ObamaIn a recent interview with CNN president Barack Obama indicated that he would rather rely on Congress to rescind Bush’s ESCR funding policy instead of doing it himself by presidential executive order:

“Well, if we can do something legislative then I usually prefer a legislative process because those are the people’s representatives”

This is good news and potentially bad news. The good news is that we have a better opportunity to fight it this way. Not only will we be able to try to encourage our legislators, who we ideally would have more influence over, to oppose any such measure, but a bill would have to go through committee hearings and floor debate where the opposition will have more time to educate and be heard.

The bad news is that this process could result in a more radical pro-ESCR policy. Wesley Smith explains this in a comment on his own post:

There is something called the Dickey Amendment, that prevents federal money to be used in embryo destructive research. Clinton got around it by signing an executive order stating that while fed money wouldn’t go to making the stem cell lines–which involves embryo destruction–AFTER THEY ARE MADE, and if “excess” embryos were used, federal $ could be spent on ESCR. That passed a court test, but then Clinton went out of office before it got started.

Bush rescinded Clinton’s EO, and replaced it with the one that permits funding but only on stem cell lines in creation before 8.9.01. In that way there is no incentive to destroy embryos in anticipation of getting federal money.

Obama has said he will basically go back to the Clinton approach. But once he does that, the fire goes out of the issue.

If, however, he says to Congress, “You deal with it,” a whole new and more radical ball game is in the offing, not just for the ESCR funding policy, but I think perhaps Dickey ITSELF could be at risk because that has to pass each year as part of the budgetary process.

If Dickey is repealed, then fed $ can go to destroy the embryos as well as afterwards–and not just in ESCR, but for other experiments and to fund the creation of embryos for research as well as therapeutic cloning.

This is no guarantee, to be sure, but definitely something to watch out for.

More on Possible Future Stem Cell Trials for AIDS Treatment

ChelseaAdult Stem Cell ResearchLeave a Comment


Here is a more recent story about something I mentioned a few months ago:

Results of a preliminary trial have raised hopes of a new form of therapy for people suffering from Aids, which occurs in the latter stages of infection with Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV). The scientists are planning further research to establish whether the treatment could even rid patients of HIV infection altogether.

The technique involves isolating genes which curb the spread of HIV inside the body, introducing the genes into human stem cells in a laboratory, then transplanting the stem cells into a patient’s bone marrow.

In the first human trial, anti-HIV stem cells were transplanted into five Aids patients undergoing bone marrow replacement as part of treatment for a form of cancer known as lymphoma.

Small quantities of the transplanted stem cells were able to grow and produce new white blood cells resistant to HIV, resulting in an improvement in the patients’ conditions.

Findings from the trial will be presented this week at the Stem Cell World Congress in Palm Springs, California. It could take up to ten years before an effective clinical treatment could be put into widespread use…

They are due to begin a larger trial where patients will be given greater concentrations of the anti-HIV stem cells in a bid to fight off their condition.

Read more

The Time for Complacency is Over

ChelseaPro LifeLeave a Comment

This is a great motivational video for all Catholics defending the sanctity of all human life, especially those heading to the March for Life this week:

In the immortal words of The Doors; the time to hesitate is through. Come, Holy Spirit, light the fire of God’s love in our souls by which we will be a light in the darkness of the world! (I like those lyrics a little better, don’t you? Though I don’t think they go with the melody…)

When you call on your congressmen to fight FOCA don’t forget to also encourage them to oppose expanding funding for embryonic stem cell research! And pray for the conversion of our pro-abortion Catholic politicians!

National Sanctity of Human Life Day 2009

ChelseaPro Life1 Comment

President BushWords you won’t hear from the President of the United States for the next four years, at least:

A Proclamation by the President of the United States of America

All human life is a gift from our Creator that is sacred, unique, and worthy of protection. On National Sanctity of Human Life Day, our country recognizes that each person, including every person waiting to be born, has a special place and purpose in this world. We also underscore our dedication to heeding this message of conscience by speaking up for the weak and voiceless among us…

The most basic duty of government is to protect the life of the innocent…

America is a caring Nation, and our values should guide us as we harness the gifts of science. In our zeal for new treatments and cures, we must never abandon our fundamental morals. We can achieve the great breakthroughs we all seek with reverence for the gift of life.

The sanctity of life is written in the hearts of all men and women. On this day and throughout the year, we aspire to build a society in which every child is welcome in life and protected in law. We also encourage more of our fellow Americans to join our just and noble cause. History tells us that with a cause rooted in our deepest principles and appealing to the best instincts of our citizens, we will prevail.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim January 18, 2009, as National Sanctity of Human Life Day. I call upon all Americans to recognize this day with appropriate ceremonies and to underscore our commitment to respecting and protecting the life and dignity of every human being.

Really, though, we should celebrate the sanctity of all human life every day!

Virtual Abortion Holocaust Memorial

Chelsea2008 Election, Abortion, Adult Stem Cell Research, Cloning, Religion, Right to LifeLeave a Comment

Georgia Right to Life has launched a virtual memorial wall to remember the almost 50 MILLION unborn children murdered since the legalization of abortion in America. It was inspired by the Vietnam Memorial which, with 58,000 names, is 500 feet long. According to this story, a similar wall displaying all of the abortion victim’s names would measure 81 miles in length! These numbers are mind blowing and the fact that such murder is legal in our country is unacceptable.

The goal of the abortion memorial is to remember each individual victim of abortion by granting them an identity and providing an epitaph, thereby personalizing their loss. Many of the names already on the wall have come from post abortive parents. Visit: Supportpersonhood.com to watch a short video and remember a victim. Proceeds from the project will be used to air Personhood ads.

Also, visit Christina’s Real Choice blog to remember the many women who have died from abortion, yes, even legal ones.

Post abortion resources:

Women:
Project Rachel
or any of these other support and recovery groups – includes some for men

Men:
Men and abortion
Resources for men