Who Needs Stem Cells?

ChelseaStem Cell Research1 Comment

Here is a story from March 2006 about Dr. John McDonald who is using restoration therapy to help paralyzed patients get back on their feet. “A major effort that we’re working on is using the concept of patterned activity in order to optimize someone’s ability to self repair their own nervous system and recover function,” Dr. McDonald tells DBIS.

WHAT IS RESTORATION THERAPY? Dr.McDonald’s specialty is activity-based restoration therapy that combines rehab therapies and advanced restoration technologies to help patients recover more quickly. He says that this approach demonstrates that patterned physical activity, such as cycling or walking movements, helps regenerate stem cells and help patients’ bodies “remember” how to move. For instance, one method uses a computer to send electrical messages to a patient’s legs, signaling the leg muscles to contract and pedal a specially designed bike. In normal development of the nervous system, cells are born and differentiate themselves through patterned neural activity; injury to the spinal cord interrupts this vital process.

I have heard of this therapy before. It is the therapy that Christopher Reeve was using before his death. He was able to regain some sensation and movement as a result.

The article still mentions research on embryonic stem cells as the “next step” for spinal cord injury researchers, which Dr. McDonald is working on apparently, but that’s to be expected.

Adult Stem Cell Study With Fat Tissue

ChelseaAdult Stem Cell ResearchLeave a Comment

Science Daily — This week, for the first time in humans, a heart failure patient received adult stem cells – taken from his own adipose (fat) tissue – which were processed and injected directly into the heart muscle with a special catheter. Francisco Fernandez-Avilés, M.D. performed the procedure in Madrid. The Texas Heart Institute at St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital is leading the collaborative clinical trial which will involve 30 patients.

See, it pays to have a little fat stored.

The procedure involves removing adult stem cells from adipose tissue just as in a liposuction procedure. The cells are processed with a proprietary process developed by Cytori Therapeutics, Inc. After about one hour of processing, the stem cells are injected directly into damaged but viable areas of the heart muscle through an investigational device called a NOGA catheter. This catheter allows three-dimensional color-coded maps of the mechanical and electrical function of the heart’s left ventricle.

These will be HUMAN patients being treated with their OWN stem cells! No embryo destruction necessary!

News Flash: The Federal Government Funds ESC Research

ChelseaEmbryonic Stem Cell Research, Money, Politics, Pro LifeLeave a Comment

If you listen to the media you would think that no federal money is currently spent on embryonic stem cell research. That’s what Sen. Arlen Specter thinks. Speaking at a press conference about federal funding for ESC research, he said:

“It is scandalous that eight years have passed since we have known about stem cell research and the potential to conquer all known maladies, and federal funds have not been available for the research.”

But newly released numbers show that from 2003-2006 the Federal Government spent $122 Million to Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research. Yes, President Bush is the very first President to spend federal money on ESC research beginning in 2001, much to pro-lifers’ dismay. You would think he would get some credit from ESC research advocates, yet they claim that he has actually stifled such research. Bill Clinton didn’t lift a finger to aide ESC research and President Bush is the bad guy. 122 MILLION DOLLARS!!! That is a tremendous amount considering the controversial nature of the research and the fact that it has failed to produce any positive results.

We Aren’t Going Anywhere

ChelseaAbortion, Pro Life, Right to Life, WomenLeave a Comment

“The anti-abortion movement is brilliant and very committed. These people aren’t going anywhere.”

That’s a quote from Mary Ann Sorrentino, former director of Rhode Island Planned Parenthood and author of the book, “The A Word: Abortion: Real Women, Tough Choices, Personal Freedom.” In an interview with the Providence Journal she gave her opinion on abortion, sex education and the right to life strategy. She considers campaigning to keep abortion legal her “life’s work.” But she is not your ordinary “safe, legal and rare” pro-choicer. She doesn’t even like the term “pro-choice” calling it “defensive” compared to the pro-life epithet “right to life” which she considers “a very powerful term.” Sorrentino wants young people to have a “fire in their belly about this right.” In other words we should be excited and proud of abortion as a right in this country because, “The abortion experience not only equalizes those who go through it, it allows others, not present, to share in the possibility of being, or having been, in the shoes of that day’s patients.” She is afraid that women today take for granted the freedom they have to “terminate a pregnancy.” I am very bothered to know that this woman spends much of her time speaking to our young people on college campuses.

She does acknowledge the strength of the pro-life movement citing our ability to control the language of the debate, specifically with regard to partial birth abortion, a term she considers much more attention grabbing than “late term” abortion. However, we’ve got a long way to go to catch up to the language of “choice,” pregnancy “termination,” and “reproductive rights” invented by the abortion rights movement and adopted by the main stream media (the media, btw, never refers to us as “pro-life” but only and always as “anti-abortion”).

But we are committed and we definitely aren’t going anywhere. As long as unborn children are ripped from their mother’s womb and as long as women are taught, not to love, but to kill in order to solve their problems, we will continue to fight.

“Every day across America, women…lie down on a stretcher, look up at a ceiling, and wait for the medical team to end their pregnancies. Every day this happens to people you know and love. So when you speak of abortion, remember them and bring to mind that woman or women, in your own circle who once existed where these women are now.”

We remember these women, and we pray for them and for women like Mary Ann Sorrentino who have been lead to believe that it is better the to murder an innocent child than to teach women to love and care for the new life within them.

Women deserve better than abortion
Silent No More Awareness Campaign

special thanks to Jill Stanek for pointing out this article.

Pro Life T-Shirt Day

ChelseaPro Life, Right to LifeLeave a Comment

Pro life t-shirt dayApril 24 is National Pro Life T-Shirt Day so now is a good time to start organizing your youth groups or other church/pro-life groups to order t-shirts for that day. My goal is to get it into our public high school here. The Catholic high-school is doing it, but I think it will make the most impact at the public school. The T-Shirt Day website has a lot of helpful information for anyone organizing it at a public school including a link to a letter from the Thomas More Law Center, written for school administrators about students’ free speech rights in school and advise on what to do if harassed. This is a great way to show your committment to fight for the rights of the unborn and to be witness to others.

If you do happen to participate in National Pro Life T-Shirt Day please send me pictures of you, your friends, your church group, or students wearing the t-shirts at school or out in public and I will post them on this website.

chelsea@zimmcomm.biz

Where is the Outcry?

ChelseaAbortion, Pro Life, Right to LifeLeave a Comment

Pro-Life Blogs has some great audio of Rev. Luke J. Robinson, pastor of the Quinn Chapel A.M.E. Church in Frederick MD addressing the crowd at the March for Life in Washington D.C. last month. They urged readers to pass it on, so I am abliging. Rev. Robinson calls attention to the genocide of the African American community. 500,000 African American lives are lost through abortion. Robinson calls it the “#1 killer of African Americans” and wonders, “where is the outcry?…Where is the voice of the African American People…the NAACP…the Congressional Black Caucus?”

Rev. Luke J. Robinson, March for Life 2007

Today, the president of the National Black Pro-Life Union released a statement about the very same thing:

“Throughout the month of February, we take the time … one month out of the year to remember the tragedies and celebrate the triumphs of African Americans in history. We celebrate the fact that we are a strong race that survived the many horrors and inhumane treatment when we were an enslaved people — presumed by many to be less than human.

We came together in the 1960s facing very difficult times when hundreds of African Americans suffered physical torture and sometimes even death … all for wanting to experience the American dream and for insisting that we be allowed that which we as American citizens are entitled to under the laws of this great country.

And since the ’60s we have continued to make great strides in breaking down color barriers and the walls of inequality…In our quest for higher education, bigger houses, better jobs and flashier cars … are we closing our eyes to the fact that more than a thousand of our children die each day by the horrible practice of abortion?

…More than 44 million children have been killed by abortion — 15 million of them were black children. Abortion has become the number one killer of black people in this country — killing more African Americans that accidents, heart disease, stroke, crimes, HIV-AIDS and all other deaths … COMBINED!”

Read more of his statement: ‘We Shall Overcome … Abortion’
More on Abortion and African American Genocide can be found at BlackGenocide.org

The Case for Duncan Hunter

ChelseaAbortion, Politics, Pro Life, Right to LifeLeave a Comment

Alright, I know I’m pulling for Sam Brownback, but there are other pro-life candidates out there right now. One is Duncan Hunter. Right Wing News has a column on the Conservative Case for Duncan Hunter which highlights his pro-life views:

“Duncan Hunter is opposed to gay marriage, staunchly anti-abortion, and should have no problem appealing to conservative Christians. As a matter of fact, Hunter has even introduced the, “Right to Life Act (which) specifically acknowledges the personhood of the unborn.” Hunter says that bill, if passed, “would allow us to have a reversal of the effects of Roe v. Wade without a constitutional amendment.”

So if Brownback doesn’t tickle your fancy, maybe Hunter will (I will probably still be rooting for Brownback, though).

Pope Speaks About Life Issues

ChelseaAbortion, Euthanasia, Family, Marriage, Pro Life, Religion, Right to LifeLeave a Comment

pope-benedict-xviedit.jpgBefore praying the Angelus yesterday, Pope Benedict said a few words about abortion, euthanasia and the family:

“Life is the work of God, and should not be denied to anyone, not even the smallest and defenseless unborn child, especially not when affected by grave disabilities…I urge you not to fall into the deception of thinking that one can dispose of life to the point of legitimizing its interruption with euthanasia, masking it perhaps with a veil of human mercy.”

“The family, based on marriage, constitutes the natural environment for the birth and education of children and, therefore, to ensure the future of the whole of humanity.”

“Let us ask the Lord, through the intercession of Mary most holy, that respect will grow for the sacred character of life, that there will be ever greater awareness of genuine family needs, and that the number will increase of those who contribute to bring about in the world the civilization of love.”

Little Known Fact About Chuck Norris

ChelseaAbortion, Politics, Pro Life, Right to LifeLeave a Comment

chucknorris.jpgAbortion was legal in the United States of America until Chuck Norris gave it a roundhouse kick in the ass.

Speaking of Law & Order, which are the trademarked names for his right and left legs, Chuck Norris took on Roe v. Wade in his column for World Net Daily:

On Jan. 22, 1973, the U.S. Supreme Court decided (via Roe v. Wade) existing laws against abortion (at both federal and state levels) violated a constitutional right to privacy and due process under the Fourteenth Amendment.

As a result all national laws prohibiting or limiting abortion were reverted. The primacy of a woman’s rights prevailed and the rights of the unborn were not only abandoned, but their nature legally reduced to nonhuman.

*snip*

A creed that needs to be cloned

From our Founding Fathers forward, there were some basic creeds by which most Americans lived, and I believe we should go back to if we are to restore civility in our land. Here are three:

1. I believe human life is made in the image of God and as such has intrinsic value, worthy to save.

And, as human beings, all zygotes are ”created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” (Preamble of the Declaration of Independence).

2. I believe aborting or destroying human life is morally wrong and goes against God’s law.

3. I believe ours and others’ mistakes can be forgiven and even turned around for the good.

God has a plan and purpose for each of our lives. And He can turn around what we and others mean for harm and use it for good.

Law & Order Takes on ESC Research, Fox, Coulter

ChelseaEmbryonic Stem Cell Research, Media, Pro LifeLeave a Comment

After a heads up from Rush Limbaugh earlier today that there would be an Ann Coulteresque figure on this evenings Law & Order (which I never watch) I decided to tune in. Actually the entire show was about ESC research, complete with a defendant with Parkinsons who went off his meds – ala Michael J. Fox – in order to gain sympathy from the jury. He was charged with attempting to murder the Ann Coulter like figure who was giving a talk at a college campus opposing ESC research (though I’ve never noticed Ann mention stem cell research, at least not in her columns). When he shot he ultimately missed her and killed another person. I did not notice that it was overly sypathetic to the pro-ESC research position. The jury found the character guilty of murder in the 2nd degree after he admitted that he tried to kill the woman because she thought that the lives of embryos in a petri dish were just as valuable as his life, shouting, “I’m better than them!” The defense attourney even made the point that there was no evidence that ESCs would ever produce a cure for Parkinsons. It was interesting anyway, not at all the way I thought it would go when I first turned it on.