Standing Up For the Most Vulnerable

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

I love this editorial by a student from the University of Minnesota. He writes in the University newspaper against the practice of embryonic stem cell research at the University’s Stem Cell Institute and against a measure in his state’s legislature to protect the cloning and destruction of human embryos while pretending to ban cloning.

Morally, embryo-destructive research turns justice on its head, sacrificing the youngest and most vulnerable members of the human family for the dubious promise of future medical breakthroughs. It violates the most basic principle of human dignity: that each and every human being is valuable, regardless of size or level of development.

The Institute’s Web site assures us that the University “work[s] diligently to ensure all research is conducted … in full accordance with all applicable laws and regulations.” But it’s unclear how slicing up embryos is compatible with Minnesota Statute 145.422, which prohibits “use of a living human conceptus for any type of scientific, laboratory research or other experimentation except to protect the life or health of the conceptus.”

A bill currently in the state Legislature could make that question moot. H.F. 34/S.F. 100, sponsored by Rep. Phyllis Kahn and Sen. Dick Cohen, would allow millions of taxpayer dollars to fund embryo-destructive research at the University. Alarmingly, this legislation would also allow funding for human cloning through somatic cell nuclear transplantation, the technique used to create Dolly the sheep.

Not that Kahn and company have the courage to use the “c” word. The House version of the bill actually purports to ban human cloning, all the while explicitly protecting it with just one qualification: that cloned human beings must be subsequently killed for research. According to the bill’s proponents, cloning only counts as “cloning” if the clone is allowed to reach the newborn stage.

Such deception is standard procedure for politicians advancing a clone-and-kill agenda. Make no mistake: they are advocating the creation of brand new humans for the sole purpose of deadly experimentation. Of course, even if the Kahn/Cohen bill fails, the killing will continue. The bottom line: embryonic research here at the University treats tiny human beings like expendable pieces of raw material with which we might experiment…

Some things are worth protesting. Embryo killing at the University of Minnesota is simply unacceptable.

Very well said.

Bush to Veto Any Anti-Life Legislation

ChelseaAbortion, Politics, Right to LifeLeave a Comment

President BushFor all his faults, President Bush is at least keeping his pro-life promise. He has stood firm in his decision to veto expanded funding for ESC research and now he’s taking it a step further. President Bush has sent a letter to the Democrat heads of Congress vowing to veto any legislation that “weakens current Federal policies and laws on abortion, or that encourages the destruction of human life at any stage.”

Good for President Bush for standing up for life and not backing down in the face of a pro-abortion Democrat majority! And good for the 155 Representatives and 35 Senators who sent the President 2 letters this year urging him to do just that.

The Federal Government’s fiscal year begins Oct. 1 and appropriations committees are set to begin moving forward funding bills. Many of our pro-life funding policies, such as prohibiting federal funding for abortions, are kept in place by provisions attached to these appropriations bills, but now that the Democrats are in power, things might soon change. So the President made it very clear:

I believe it is the most basic duty of Government to guard the innocent. With that in mind, I will veto any legislation that weakens current Federal policies and laws on abortion, or that encourages the destruction of human life at any stage…Our Nation was founded on the belief that every human being has rights, dignity, and matchless value. Every child should be welcomed into life and protected in law.

This is what is at stake next year. Even some of our Canadian friends agree. From Suzanne at The Big Blue Wave Canada:

I hope American pro-lifers make every effort to get a pro-lifer on the Republican ticket. Do not sell your votes cheap to more “known” candidates. If the candidate you are supporting does not support fetal righ, he will not act like he supports it. You did not come all this way to finally elect a pro-abort.

Read Bush’s Letter here

Phase II ASC Clinical Trials Approved for Texas

ChelseaAdult Stem Cell Research, MiscellaneousLeave a Comment

MELBOURNE, Australia, May 2 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Australia’s adult stem cell company, Mesoblast Limited (ASX: MSB; US OTC: MBLTY), today announced that the United States Food and Drug Administration (US FDA) has cleared the Investigational New Drug Submission (IND) of its US-based sister company, Angioblast Systems Inc., to commence a Phase 2 clinical trial of its allogeneic, or ‘off-the-shelf’, adult stem cells for patients with heart attacks..

The Phase 2 clinical trial will be based at the Texas Heart Institute, and will follow a similar protocol to the one used by the same investigators in preclinical studies for the IND submission. These showed that implantation of the company’s proprietary allogeneic stem cells by catheter into damaged heart muscle resulted in significant improvement in heart function and reduction in congestive heart failure.

There they go again. Darn it! Why do they insist on doing research using adult stem cells? Don’t they know that embryonic stem cells are more “promising” and “hopeful”? Someone needs to tell them to cut it out before they treat something that we’ve all been promised will be treated with ESCs. Oh, wait, they already do that!

H/T: Wesley Smith

Previous post:
First Human Phase II ASC Therapy Trial in US

MO Supreme Court Protects Children, Families

ChelseaAbortion, Family, Pro LifeLeave a Comment

At least some good pro-life news is coming from my state. The state Supreme Court upheld the law that says “no person shall intentionally cause, aid, or assist a minor to obtain an abortion without the consent” of a parent or court. It also gives parents the ability to take legal action against those who break the law. It only makes sense, when you’re talking about something as serious as abortion, that a minor be required to have the consent of one or both parents! I mean they need parental consent to take Tylenol at school!!!

My good friend, Patty Skain, the Executive Director of Missouri Right to Life had this to say:

“This law was written to really protect the rights of parents…minors will go out of state — and, in a way, almost be lured out of state — and not have the benefits of having their parents there to help them in that decision.”

Three cheers for the MO Supreme Court!

Can You Smell What Those Stem Cells Are Cookin’?

ChelseaAdult Stem Cell Research, MiscellaneousLeave a Comment

Science Daily — Hopkins researchers have identified a backup supply of stem cells that can repair the most severe damage to the nerves responsible for our sense of smell. These reservists normally lie around and do nothing, but when neighboring cells die, the scientists say, the stem cells jump into action.

Isn’t that fantastic? God is such an amazing architecht!

“These stem cells act like the Army Reserves of our nose,” explains lead author Randall Reed, Ph.D., a professor of neuroscience at Johns Hopkins, “supporting a class of active-duty stem cells that help repair normal wear and tear. They don’t come in until things are really bad.”

To figure out how the olfactory system repairs severely damaged nerve cells, Reed’s team exposed mouse olfactory nerves to a cloud of toxic methyl-bromide gas. Methyl bromide kills not only olfactory nerve cells but also neighboring, non-nerve cells in the nasal passage. Three weeks after chemical exposure, the researchers examined nasal cells to see which, if any, had grown back.

They discovered that the newly grown cells, both nerve and non-nerve, grew from HBCs-a population of cells not previously known for repair abilities. “We were stunned because HBCs normally don’t grow much or do anything,” says Reed. “And the most surprising thing is that HBCs can grow into both nerves and non-nerve cells; they do so by generating the other active type of nasal stem cell.”

Interestingly, it was stem cells taken from olfactory tissue that helped repair damaged spinal cords in Dr. Lima’s clinical study.

HJR 11 Defeated in Rules

ChelseaCloning, Politics, Pro Life1 Comment

This evening the Rules Committee voted on HJR 11, the resolution to give Missouri voters a chance to really ban human cloning. The vote was 4-3 against, effectively ending any chance of getting the resolution through the legislature. One of the representatives who voted no represents a district that voted against amendment 2 by over 60% – not much of a “representative” of his district in this case. Someone I spoke with said that there is still the possibility of getting it on the floor with a discharge petition or another rarely used maneuver to bypass a committee vote, but it’s looking like we’re going to have to go the initiative petition route. That’s not really a terrible thing, but through the legislative process, we would have avoided spending a LOT of time and money.

Here is the letter I sent around to the committee members this morning:

My name is Chelsea Zimmerman and I am from Holts Summit Missouri. Seven years ago, when I was a junior in high school, I was in a car accident that damaged my spinal cord and left me paralyzed from the chest down. My injury is considered complete, which means that there is little or no medical chance that I will ever regain the use of my lower body.

I am writing you in support of HJR 11, to effectively ban all human cloning in the state of Missouri. Members of the opposition have labeled people like me as anti-stem cell research or opponents of stem cell research, effectively lumping all forms of stem cell research into the same category. But not all stem cell research is created equal. As a disabled individual I want to see that Missourians have access to all therapies and cures, but I also want to see those cures come about ethically. In supporting this resolution I also support ethical and productive stem cell research using stem cells found in places such as human tissue, umbilical cord blood, and amniotic fluid. I promote this research. I am excited about this research and I see it as the real hope for stem cell therapies and cures.

But the issue before us today is whether or not to allow voter the opportunity to ban the creation of cloned human beings beginning at the embryonic stage. To its credit Amendment 2 successfully banned the implantation and birth of a live human clone, but it left the door open to research on cloned human embryos.

Opponents of this resolution will say that this research is only on a minute group of cells called a blastocyst, implying that no embryo has been created. This country’s most prominent embryonic stem cell researcher, James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin, said last year, such claims are a “disingenuous,” an attempt to “define away” the moral issue instead of confronting it honestly (MSNBC, June 25, 2005, www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8303756/) A blastocyst the name given to the second stage of normal human development when the fertilized egg (either from regular sexual reproduction or somatic cell nuclear transfer) creates inner group of cells (which contain embryonic stem cells) with an outer shell. This is how human beings develop! A zygote becomes a blastocyst, becomes an embryo, becomes a fetus, becomes a baby, becomes a toddler, etc… Every single human person began as a zygote and days later a blastocyst. Every single person, yes, even you! So it stands to reason that a blastocyst created through SCNT, which is indistinguishable from an embryo created with sperm and egg, would be no different.

A line must be drawn defining what constitutes good, moral and ethical research and the cloning of embryos crosses that line. We’re talking about creating and destroying human beings for scientific research. No cause, not even the high and noble goal of relieving or even eliminating human suffering is worth such a price. Science must be guided by clear ethical boundaries.

Embryos in a Petri dish are not lab rats. They are humans created in the image and likeness of God. When we fail to see the beauty and dignity of the human person from its very beginning and turn humanity into a science experiment, then we diminish what it is to be human.

Please support HJR 11 and vote it out of the Rules Committee.

NFP vs. Contraception

ChelseaContraception, Family, Marriage, Natural Family Planning, Pro Life, Sex, Vocation4 Comments

Alright, I am getting really behind here. The second and third installments of Fr. Euteneuer’s mini catechesis on contraception are out. This second topic addresses the misconception that natural family planning is just “Church approved birth control.” The third topic regards the myth of overpopulation.

A few words on NFP and contraception. First, it is important to remember that for Catholics the act of sexual intercourse is meant to be the physical expression of the wedding vows. To quote Christopher West, from his book “Good News About Sex and Marriage”:

At the alter, bride and groom commit themselves to each other freely, totally, faithfully and fruitfully until death – these are the canonical promises they make, the promises of fidelity, indissolubility, and openness to children. Then that night, and throughout their marriage, they enact their commitment. They express with their bodies what they expressed at the altar with their minds and hearts. In doing so, they consummate their marriage. That is, they complete it, perfect it, seal it, renew it.

Anything else is a cheap imitation at best and immoral at worst.

Notice the key words openness to children. Yes, in the Catholic Church, married couples make a promise to remain open to new life throughout their marriage. In his encyclical, Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI states that “each and every marriage act must remain open to the transmission of life.” This is a hard concept for most people to understand because some people have taken it to mean that couples must then have as many children as they possibly can. But the Church recognizes that there are serious reasons for avoiding pregnancy and spacing births and this is where the difference between NFP and contraception needs to be understood. For these purposes it might be easier to understand the intention of Pope Paul VI’s words in the negative: the marital act may never be knowingly or willfully closed to the transmission of human life. He explains the responsible regulation of births in this way:

If therefore there are well-grounded reasons for spacing births, arising from the physical or psychological condition of husband or wife, or from external circumstances, the Church teaches that married people may then take advantage of the natural cycles, immanent in the reproductive system and engage in marital intercourse only during those times that are infertile, thus controlling birth in a way which does not in the least offend the moral principles (HV, 16).

Couples must speak the language of their marital vows (fidelity, permanence, and openness to children) every time they engage in the marital embrace. But they are not obligated to engage in intercourse if there is a good reason to refrain – such as a serious reason for avoiding pregnancy. Yes, in this case, abstinence can be an expression of love! At the same time a couple can, while avoiding pregnancy for serious reasons, use the natural periods of infertility to express their marital love. This is the profound difference between NFP and contraception. Infertile intercourse is an act of God, whereas, through contraception, the couple, “takes the powers of life into their own hands with the intent of thwarting God’s creative designs.” It is the difference between being non-procreative (NFP) and anti-procreative (contraception).

Of course NFP can be abused and used as a form of contraception. That is why it is important that it be used with a “procreative attitude.”

The right and lawful ordering of birth demands, first of all, that spouses fully recognize and value the true blessings of family life and that they acquire complete mastery over themselves and their emotions (HV, 21)

Natural family planning is not simply Church approved birth control in the sense that it can be used like other forms of artificial contraception to refuse the gift of life. Used properly, it is a way for couples to cooperate with the body’s natural cycle of fertility for the responsible regulation of birth.

Contraception is to be judged so profoundly unlawful as never to be, for any reason, justified. To think or to say the contrary is equal to maintaining that in human life, situations may arise in which it is lawful not to recognize God as God (JPII, October 10, 1983).

To experience the gift of married love while respecting the laws of conception is to acknowledge that one is not the master of the sources of life but rather the minister of the design established by the Creator. Just as man does not have unlimited dominion over his body in general, so also, and with more particular reason, he has no such dominion over his specifically sexual faculties, for these are concerned by their very nature with the generation of life, of which God is the source (HV, 13).

Sources
Good News About Sex and Marriage
Theology of the Body Explained
Humanae Vitae

Previous Post:
How Can There Be Too Many Children?

O, Those Promising Stem Cells!

ChelseaAdult Stem Cell Research, Science1 Comment

I mean the adult ones. You know, the ones that can be obtained without destroying a human life. It seems that stem cells found in bone marrow (that seems to be the most popular source for ASCs) have been very successful in treating race horse injuries.

Stem cell therapy may be controversial in human medicine but in the world of horse racing it is becoming the odds-on favorite for tackling tendon damage, which accounts for one in three racecourse injuries.

Soon the same technology could be applied to humans…

In contrast to the controversial field of embryonic stem cell research, which involves the destruction of days-old embryos, the focus in the orthopaedic area is on adult mesenchymal stem cells that are found in bone marrow.

These immature versions of normal cells can morph into different forms of tissue, such as bone, cartilage and tendon.

In the case of horses, Smith has developed a technique to extract stem cells from the animal’s own sternum and then purify and multiply them in a laboratory.

After two or three weeks they are injected back into the horse’s tendon, where they regenerate new tissue that fills up ruptures caused by excessive exercise.

Simply amazing! Similar therapies may soon be tried in humans too:

VetCell BioScience Ltd, a spin-off from the college that Smith (professor of equine orthopedics) helped set up, is already working with the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital in London on protocols for human clinical trials, which could start by the end of the year.

The initial aim will be to treat rotator cuff shoulder injuries, frequently sustained by baseball pitchers and other athletes involved in throwing sports. Treating damage to the Achilles tendon is another possibility.

All this without the destruction of innocent human life? Somebody alert the media! As if they would pay attention.

HT: DoNoHarm, Wesley Smith

Our Mother Surely is Weeping Today

ChelseaAbortion, Prayer, Religion, Right to Life2 Comments

guadalupe1.jpg

MEXICO’s capital has legalised abortion, defying the Church but delighting pro-choice advocates in the world’s second-largest Roman Catholic country.

Mexico City politicians voted 46 to 19 to pass a leftist-sponsored bill allowing women to abort in the first three months of pregnancy.

Yes, Our Lady, who once came to this city to save her Mexican children, most certainly is in tears today.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, we turn to you who are the protectress of unborn children and ask that you intercede for us, so that we may more firmly resolve to join you in protecting all human life. Let our prayers be united to your perpetual motherly intercession on behalf of those whose lives are threatened, be they in the womb of their mother, on the bed of infirmity, or in the latter years of their life. May our prayers also be coupled with peaceful action which witnesses to the goodness and dignity of all human life, so that our firmness of purpose may give courage to those who are fearful and bring light to those who are blinded by sin.
(from a prayer said at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception on January 22, 1999)

Pro-Life T-Shirt Day

ChelseaActivism, Pro Life, Right to Life1 Comment

MeYes, today was National Pro-Life T-Shirt Day and I didn’t get my shirt in the mail until I got off work this afternoon! I hope some of you were able to participate. I know that a few of our local Catholic schools did – not about any of the kids at the public schools.

In case you haven’t looked at the shirts and you can’t really see from my picture it is a 3-D ultrasound picture with the words “Fingers. Ears. Eyes.” across the top; “Nose. Hands. Heart.” at the bottom of the picture followed by “What part of ABORTION don’t you understand?” And today thousands of young people spread that message to thousands more across the nation.

National PL T-Shirt Day is the brainchild of Rock for Life and American Life League. Today they kicked off the T-shirt day with a press conference in TN during the Gospel Music Association’s 2007 Music Week and were later joined by some pro-life Christian music performers. In a press release, RFL president, Erik Whittington had this to say:

“There is no doubt that we are currently living in dark times. From the senseless murders at Virginia Tech to the fact that thousands of children are lost every single day to abortion in this country, the Culture of Death is certainly permeating our society. However, we do have reason to hope and that reason is our youth. Today’s young people are increasingly more pro-life and they will be the ones who bring the attacks against human life to an end.”

Please email me if you have pictures of you and/or your friends wearing your shirts out today and I will post them on the website!