UK Woman Wants Spinal Cord Cut

ChelseaJuly 18, 2013Pro Life3 Comments

This is truly disturbing. Last month I told you about people with so-called Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID) who actually want to have their healthy limbs cut off. It appears this disorder is not limited to “amputee wannabes”.

According to the Daily Mail:

A Cambridge University educated research scientist is so desperate to live the life of a wheelchair-bound person she is prepared to pay a doctor help her become disabled. Since childhood, Chloe Jennings-White has made several attempts at injuring herself so she can finally climb into her own wheelchair. In 2010 she even found a doctor overseas willing to help her become disabled by cutting her sciatic and femoral nerves, but she could not afford the £16,000 costs…

The Cambridge graduate believes both of her legs do not belong to her and dreams of being paralysed from the waist down.’Something in my brain tells me my legs are not supposed to work,’ she said. ‘Having any sensation in them just feels wrong.’

Two things:
1. If this does not fit the definition of “psychotic”, I don’t know what does.

2. No truly ethical physician would ever perform such a surgery.

Read more from the Daily Mail…if you can stand it. Then read my previous post, Transhumanism: Amputating Healthy Limbs, for more on why BIID is a major concern.

*IMG: Chloe Jennings-White wears leg braces and uses a wheelchair…even though her legs are fine.

One Small Voice Making a Big Difference

ChelseaJuly 16, 2013DisabledLeave a Comment

Even the smallest person can change the course of the future. -Galadriel, Lord of the Rings

Kurt Kondrich writes about his daughter Chloe (shown here with PA Gov. Tom Corbett):

Today there is a tiny hidden world of beautiful human beings with Down syndrome hidden in the womb who are being targeted and eliminated because a lost, misguided culture has determined that these people are defective and do not need to be here. I often feel like Horton when I advocate and try to make society see and understand that children like my beautiful daughter Chloe are priceless, precious gifts this world desperately needs. Chloe has planted more positive seeds in 10 years than most people do in a lifetime, and I often wonder what I did right to be blessed with such a perfect daughter. When I realized that 90%+ of children diagnosed prenatally with Down syndrome are targeted and eliminated, I made it my mission to show people that these remarkable children possess incredible ABILITIES and “They Are Here” to spread Light into a culture that has embraced much darkness.

Chloe recently spent one week meeting with several policymakers and government leaders to connect her “Brilliant Soul” and show how one small Voice (like in Whoville) can make an incredible impact for LIFE – “We Are Here”

Read more. See more pics from Chloe’s visit with PA lawmakers.

Chloe was recently featured on an episode of Facing Life Head On with Brad Mattes. Her episode has been nominated for a Regional Emmy Award.

Get Stephanie Wincik’s book: Brilliant Souls.

IVF Still a Young Science

ChelseaJuly 12, 2013IVFLeave a Comment

In case you missed it the first time, this post was republished at American Life League yesterday:

After the death of Robert Edwards, one of the British doctors who perfected in vitro fertilization (IVF), earlier this year, Miriam Zoll took a look at the legacy of third party reproduction, specifically the often overlooked numbers of failed treatments associated with these invasive technologies.

In 2012, according to the European Society of Embryology and Reproduction, 1.5 million ART cycles were conducted globally and 1.1 million failed (76.7 percent). In 2010 in the United States, data from the Centers for Disease Control indicate that 150,000 cycles were performed and 103,000 failed (68.6 percent). While the minority of grateful patients who do become parents celebrate Edwards’ legacy, the severe trauma of those fragile-hearted millions who experienced failed treatments, miscarriages, still births or emptied ovaries too often slip unnoticed into the mists of unrecorded history.

Reproductive medicine is still a young science. Many women signing up for treatments do not realize until later the extent to which they are participating in a vast experiment, where evidence-based medicine has yet to establish a reasonable foothold. Few, if any, longitudinal studies have been conducted to determine the health risks of women undergoing treatments and the babies born from them.

Babies conceived through IVF who are lucky enough to survive to birth have a much higher risk of developing genetic diseases and chromosomal abnormalities. As for the women, Zoll notes that risks include elevated rates of preeclampsia and blood clotting as well as ovarian, endometrial, and breast cancers. Then there are the sometimes extremely debilitating mental disorders when treatments fail, as they often do, especially for older women.

Read the rest.

Germany Memorial Planned for Nazi Euthanasia Victims

ChelseaJuly 9, 2013Disabled, Euthanasia1 Comment

This is good news:

Work has begun on a memorial in Germany for the 300,000 people murdered by the Nazis for having mental and physical disabilities or chronic illnesses.

A 30m (100ft) long glass wall is being built in the centre of Berlin, near the former site of the Nazi-era office that organised the “euthanasia” programme.

In 1939, Adolf Hitler told officials that people “considered incurable” should be “granted a mercy killing”.

The programme ended officially in 1941, but continued covertly until 1945.

At first, personnel killed people by starvation and lethal injection. They later used gas chambers at killing centres in Germany and Austria.

The programme, also known as Action T4, is considered a precursor to the Holocaust, during which millions of Jews were killed.

On Monday, Germany’s State Minister for Culture, Bernd Neumann, said educating people about the Nazis’ crimes and honouring their victims remained an obligation for the country.

When he announced the plan on Monday, Germany’s State Minister for Culture, Bernd Neumann, said educating people about the Nazis’ crimes and honouring their victims remained an obligation for the country. Good. Because as much as we condemn the Holocaust it doesn’t appear that we have learned learned a whole lot from it.

Believe it or not, I’ve actually talked to people who think that the Holocaust was just about the extermination of the Jews. As physician assisted suicide of the terminally ill and disabled becomes increasingly more commonly accepted — and practiced — in our country and throughout the world, this is the part of the holocaust that people need much more education on.

See: Holocaust Lessons Not Learned

U.S. v. Windsor: Following the Griswold Playbook

ChelseaJuly 6, 2013Marriage2 Comments

This week, two of my favorite lawyers wrote their analysis of last week’s Supreme Court marriage decisions — specifically the ruling on DOMA.

First, my friend Jim Cole, legal counsel for Missouri Right to Life, writes at Mercator Net:

As the dissents of Justice Scalia and Justice Alito make clear, the reasoning and legal principles on which the ultimate result was based remain murky. It is as if the Court went out of its way to mystify the exact reasons for holding unconstitutional a Federal law that was enacted by overwhelming majorities in 1996 and signed into law by President Bill Clinton — not exactly a hateful, bigoted conservative. The murkiness may well serve as a cover to allow the decision to be used later for an even more expansive ruling.

Some are already calling this ruling the “Roe v. Wade” of marriage laws, but Jim notes that it actually more closely resembles Griswold vs. Connecticut, which paved the way for Roe.

The Windsor opinion serves the same role for “gay marriage” as the case, Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), served for abortion almost half a century ago. It was in Griswold that the Court penned the infamous language that “specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights have penumbras, formed by emanations from those guarantees that help give them life and substance.” In Griswold, the Court ruled unconstitutional a state law prohibiting the sale of contraceptives because it impinged “the zone of privacy created by several fundamental constitutional guarantees,” thus offending due process.

Strictly speaking, the Griswold opinion addressed only the rights of a married couple to purchase contraceptives, but the principle announced in the decision clearly extended further. The Court quickly jettisoned its concern for the marital relationship in favor of a concern for the sexual behavior of individuals, married or not (see Eisenstadt v. Baird, 1972). Griswold’s concept of privacy then became the linchpin of Roe v. Wade in 1973. When one reads the decisions in chronological order, it is hard not to conclude that Griswold was intended only to be a way station and not the destination, and its stress on protecting the marital relationship was just rhetoric.

UK to Possibly Be First to Offer “Three-Parent” IVF

ChelseaJuly 3, 2013Cloning, Genetic Engineering, IVFLeave a Comment

After roughly a year of polling the British public about it (because naturally that’s the best way to determine all serious ethical questions involving complicated human biotechnology), last week the UK’s Chief Medical Officer, Dame Sally Davies, announced that the British government’s health department is drafting regulations in order to start offering “three-parent” IVF treatments in order to combat mitochondrial disease. What this means, essentially, is that the UK will give the genetic engineering of future generations without their consent it’s official stamp of approval.

It is important to note that this science is very new. Last week we talked about traditional IVF still being a vast experiment after 35 years. This science is still quite in its embryonic stages (pardon the pun). There are a few different techniques for manufacturing “three-parent embryos.” The one being developed at Britain’s Newcastle University is known as pronuclear transfer (PNT) and swaps DNA between two fertilized human eggs. The first time this technique was successfully used to make human embryos was just two years ago.

So, on top of the fact that, life IVF, the creation of new human life in this way is immoral in and of itself, there is no telling what kind of effect this will have on the children it produces. Indeed, there is a good possibility that we may simply be trading mitochondrial disease for other abnormalities if babies are ever born using this technique.

And that’s a big if.

In Newcastle’s initial report most of the embryos were so mangled in the reprogramming process itself that they couldn’t even start dividing. In order to get better results, more research must be done, which means more and more tiny human lives lost and destroyed. Even if the technique is somehow perfected, though, the destruction of life will continue. Recall that for every 3-parent embryo made in the process of PNT, two other embryos must be created and destroyed.

It is also worth noting that this does not doesn’t cure mitochondrial disease or prevent its inheritance. Much like PGD, it simply makes sure no embryo with defective mitochondria are born.

For more on this, check out episode three of BioTalk in which Rebecca Taylor and I discuss in more detail the long-term implications of germ line modification and the “Brave New” United States where there are no restrictions on this or other once unthinkable kinds of human experimentation currently in practice. We also talk about the impact this kind of experimentation has on women. Ladies, pay attention. Human Biotechnology is a “women’s issue” if ever there was one.

After 35 Years, IVF Still a Vast Experiment

ChelseaJune 28, 2013Reproductive TechnologyLeave a Comment

After the death of Robert Edwards, one of the British doctors who perfected in-vitro fertilization (IVF), earlier this year, Miriam Zoll took a look at the legacy of third party reproduction, specifically the often over-looked numbers of failed treatments associated with these invasive technologies.

In 2012, according to the European Society of Embryology and Reproduction, 1.5 million ART cycles were conducted globally and 1.1 million failed (76.7 percent). In 2010 in the United States, data from the Centers for Disease Control indicate that 150,000 cycles were performed and 103,000 failed (68.6 percent). While the minority of grateful patients who do become parents celebrate Edwards’ legacy, the severe trauma of those fragile-hearted millions who experienced failed treatments, miscarriages, still births or emptied ovaries too often slip unnoticed into the mists of unrecorded history.

Reproductive medicine is still a young science. Many women signing up for treatments do not realize until later the extent to which they are participating in a vast experiment, where evidence-based medicine has yet to establish a reasonable foothold. Few, if any, longitudinal studies have been conducted to determine the health risks of women undergoing treatments and the babies born from them.

Babies conceived through IVF who are lucky enough to survive to birth have a much higher risk of developing genetic diseases and chromosomal abnormalities. As for the women, Zoll notes that risks include elevated rates of preeclampsia and blood clotting as well as ovarian, endometrial and breast cancers. Then there are the sometimes extremely debilitating mental disorders when treatments fail, as they often do, especially for older women.

Many women who delay motherhood are often depending on fertility treatments as a safety net for building a family later in life. Most wholeheartedly believe––and the mainstream media and popular culture confirm their beliefs with premature optimism––that they will easily become pregnant after their first IVF treatment, or that the eggs they freeze for $18,000 at age 35 will mingle with sperm at 45 and blossom into a healthy baby. The fact is, roughly only 1,000 babies have been born through the new egg freezing technology known as vitrification––and mostly to mothers younger than 30. There is virtually no medical evidence supporting the notion that women in their thirties and forties will have any success at all with this costly intervention, or that the babies born from it will be healthy.

The baby-making industry is a multi-billion dollar global market that makes many people very rich at the exploitation of others. This includes not only the men and women who are used as hardware stores for spare baby-making parts, but also vulnerable couples who, feeling the pain of infertility, are fed myths about the wonders of modern reproductive science.

Miriam Zoll is the author of the new book Cracked Open: Liberty, Fertility and the Pursuit of High Tech Babies.

A Promise Wrongly Made

ChelseaJune 26, 2013IVF, Reproductive TechnologyLeave a Comment

In an article about a recommended change in Australian law that would give children greater rights to know about their sperm donor, IVF professor Gab Kovacs said, retrospectively changing the law would be “un-Australian and unfair”.

In a letter to the editor, “Ian Smith” responded:

Professor Gab Kovacs says he is “worried about men who donated over 25 years ago, and may not have subsequently told their current partners about the donation” (”Sperm donor law must put child first, says Napthine”, 16/6). I am one such man. In 1986 I responded to a call by Professor Kovacs for sperm donors. I know I have seven offspring born from my donations. I also have two children born in my marriage. I have joined the voluntary registry.

Undoubtedly it will be complex for me and my family if and when any of my donor offspring choose to make contact with me. However, I believe the Premier is right; people born from donor conception and who want to have information about their genetic heritage have a fundamental right to do so.

I understand that Professor Kovacs feels he must keep that promise of anonymity. However, it was a promise wrongly made. The injustice to those whose lives were created is profound and it should be rectified.

Indeed. Thousands of donor conceived people have a deep longing to know where they came from, who they look like, whether they have any biological siblings and sometimes even why they’ve developed some genetic disease. Many of them are speaking out about being unfairly stripped of their right to a connection to their biological roots.

From the beginning, third party reproduction has been putting the desires of adults over the best interest of children. As the Catechism of the Catholic Church rightly states, these technologies “infringe the child’s right to be born of a father and mother known to him and bound to each other by marriage” (CCC 2376, emphasis mine). If we can’t stop the immoral practice of creating children in laboratories yet, the least we can do is not further dehumanize them by intentionally cutting them off from their biological heritage.

What Really Happened at Komen

ChelseaJune 21, 2013Pro LifeLeave a Comment

Wow. Austin Ruse has a fascinating, albeit very awful and sad, read at Crisis Magazine today with the inside scoop on what really happened during the Komen break from and immediate reconciliation with Planned Parenthood last year. He concludes, as most of us knew already:

What this whole mess shows abundantly is that the pro-choice wing of the Democratic Party cares more about abortion than saving women’s lives. The Komen grants of a few million dollars were a tiny drop in Planned Parenthood’s billion dollar bucket and the amount was immediately replaced by other donors. What this whole thing shows is what most of us have believed all along. In some profoundly strange way, to some abortion is a sacrament and all heretics to that orthodoxy are to be burned at the stake. Abortion über alles.

Read the whole thing!