BABY PRODUCTION LINE NEARS AS MICROCHIP USED TO AUTOMATE IN VITRO FERTILIZATION
SPRINGFIELD, Illinois, May 24, 2001 (LSN.ca) – Researchers in the United States have developed a microchip that automatically carries out portions of the in vitro fertilization process and hope to be able to automate the entire process soon. The New Scientist reported yesterday that “in a move recalling Aldous Huxley's famous production lines for making babies in Brave New World” researchers David Beebe and Matthew Wheeler have found, with experiments on mice, that the automated procedures are superior to the traditional methods which involve human manipulation of sperm and egg and eventually human embryos.
The researchers say they expect the technology will first be used for livestock production, but their eventual aim is to use it for human embryos. Moreover, the device could also eventually be used to screen embryos for genetic disorders and destroy them. George Seidel, a reproductive physiologist at Colorado State University told the magazine that the work could be the first step towards a future in which IVF becomes the norm.
May 28, 2001
PRO-LIFE DIPLOMAT APPOINTED TO STATE DEPARTMENT BY BUSH
WASHINGTON (LSN.ca) – President George W. Bush has nominated John M. Klink to head the influential Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration Bureau at the State Department. The nomination was met with surprise, as it was not the selection of Secretary of State Colin L. Powell who had recommended another candidate. However, the media and pro-abortion groups are attempting to derail his nomination by suggesting that a pro-lifer is unfit for public office.
The New York Times suggests that Klink would oversee an annual budget of more than $800 million that is chiefly distributed to international agencies like the office of the United Nations high commissioner for refugees and thus may be able to curb the United Nations' targeting of refugee camps with abortifacient drugs.
According to the Times, Mr. Klink, 51, represented the Vatican on the executive board of Unicef from 1988 to 1999 and worked for Catholic Relief Services from 1976 to 1986. His résumé lists his current job as adviser to the Permanent Observer Mission of the Holy See to the United Nations. It also says he is a member of the Republican National Committee's Catholic Task Force.
(This update courtesy of LifeSite Daily News.)
Click here for more breaking Pro-Life news.
ROE V WADE DECISION DENIES PRENATAL CARE TO POOR ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS IN U.S.
NEW YORK (LSN.ca) – A panel of judges on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit ruled Tuesday that pregnant illegal immigrants in the United States have no right to prenatal care under Medicaid. Lawyers argued that once children are born in the United States, even to someone who is here illegally – and are indisputably citizens, such children could argue that it was unconstitutional for prenatal care to be denied.
The New York Times reports that the appeals court panel, made up of Judges Jon O. Newman, Amalya L. Kearse and Ralph K. Winter, cited the landmark abortion ruling to reject that argument. “If, as Roe v. Wade instructs, a fetus lacks constitutional protection to assure it an opportunity to be born, we see no basis for according it constitutional protection to assure it enhanced prospects of good health after birth,” it said.
GERMAN DOCTORS REJECT EMBRYO RESEARCH
BERLIN (LSN.ca) – The dreaded Nazi experimentation on human beings has left German doctors with a healthy disgust for research on human beings and thus a rejection of human embryo research. AFP reported that on Wednesday a meeting of 250 doctors, representing Germany's 370,000 physicians, rejected as “ethically unacceptable” the use of embryos for genetic research.
At the meeting in Ludwigshafen, the group voted against softening the 1990 law that bans embryo research in Germany. “To kill on order is not a medical practice,” they said in a statement. They also voiced their opposition to euthanasia, which became legal in the Netherlands last month. (Agence France Presse English Wed 23 May 2001)
SCIENTISTS HID FAILURES IN CREATING FIRST GENETICALLY MODIFIED HUMANS
WASHINGTON (LSN.ca) – Jacques Cohen and his colleagues at Saint Barnabas Medical Center in Livingston, N.J., who pioneered the creation of the first genetically modified child by combining genetic material from two women and a man, have concealed evidence of problems with their research.
Cohen's study, published in the March journal of Human Reproduction said that all the children born by the technique appear to be completely healthy. However, the Washington Post reports that Cohen et al. failed to mention, “that the perfect record of healthy births was attained because they aborted a developing fetus that was found to have a rare genetic disorder. Moreover, another pregnancy achieved in the experiment ended in miscarriage and involved a fetus afflicted with the same rare disorder, called Turner's syndrome, in which an entire chromosome is mysteriously missing.”
Somehow the experiment seems to have led to the increased likelihood of the syndrome since two of the seventeen fetuses created by the technique had Turner's syndrome, an incidence at least seven to eight times what experts deem normal. The Post reports that internal documents from Saint Barnabas explicitly acknowledge that the novel technique may be causing the problem.
The published report on the study never mentioned Turner's syndrome and concluded there is “no reason” to believe that the technique is harmful to fetuses or babies. “Therefore,” the team wrote, “we continue to perform these clinical procedures, albeit as an experimental protocol.” Not surprisingly, Cohen declined to be interviewed by the Post. The paper notes that about 30 such babies that are alive around the world are being monitored closely for problems arising from their genetic manipulation.
ABORTIONISTS' FAVORITE LAWYER WANTS TO END CATHOLIC SCHOOL FUNDING IN CANADA
TORONTO (LSN.ca) – Toronto lawyer Clayton Ruby, best known as the lawyer of choice for abortionists and of the pro-abortion movement, has come out swinging against the constitutionally guaranteed funding of Catholic schools in Ontario. A press conference intended to be a coalition of groups fighting the intended Ontario tax credit for parents wishing to send their children to private schools, had as its main speakers Alan Borovoy of the Canadian Civil Liberties and Clayton Ruby.
The group was furious that Ontario was even considering a partial tax credit for parents who send their children to private, religiously based schools. However, according to a report by the Canadian Press, Ontario is the only Canadian province not funding private religious schools, at least partially.
Borovoy said that “the situation is a bad one when you have only one religious group funded publicly for its schools” but publicly funding all religious schools would make the situation even worse, because it further “undermines the ability of public schools to do the all-important job of integration.” Ruby said, “One wonders why the Constitution, which at the moment requires funding for Catholic schools, has to remain that way.”
The abortion proponents are apparently afraid of losing the social liberal control of public education and the formation of the minds of Ontario's children. Ruby was quoted by the Globe and Mail today, “What the public school system does that is irreplaceable is teach people tolerance,” 'tolerance' now being a well-known code word for rejection and intolerance of traditional moral and social principles.
ANOTHER VACCINE USING ABORTED BABY TISSUE MARKETED
WASHINGTON (LSN.ca) – A new combined vaccine, TWINRIX®, against both Hepatitis-A and B has been developed and is being recommended for children aged 1 to 18 years. The vaccine, by Glaxo SmithKline, however, is tainted with the specter of abortion since it uses the Hepatitis-A vaccine, which was cultivated on aborted fetal tissue. The pro-life group Children of God for Life, which specializes in factual documentation of vaccines from abortion, notes that the same situation exists for the MMR (Measles, Mumps, Rubella) vaccine where Rubella is the “tainted” ingredient in the combo vaccine.
The pro-life group notes that while some vaccines for Polio, Rubella, Rabies are tainted by abortion, there are other vaccines against these diseases which did not use aborted babies for their manufacture. There is no available ethical alternative however for the chicken pox vaccine.
News Briefs
• Catholic News Service (CNS) reports that Bishop Thomas V. Daily of Brooklyn has raised the specter of “black genocide” in pointing out to his predominantly black congregation, that 57 percent of black babies are aborted in the diocese. These figures do not hold for Hispanics or whites, leading the bishop to point to the disproportionate impact of abortion on the black community. “Almost 8,000 more black babies were killed than were delivered in the Brooklyn Diocese in 1997,” Bishop Daily said.
• CNS reports that Dana Scallon, the well-known singer and member of the European Parliament, has warned Irish voters to reject the Treaty of Nice, since it could legalize abortion and divorce in Ireland. The Treaty, which paves the way for a realignment of the European Union, would increase member nations by 12 and alter the voting rights of the existing 15 member nations within European Union institutions. Scallon, a Catholic, said the treaty will set up a “two-tiered Europe,” where large nations can control policy decisions. “This inner circle will be economically and politically more powerful than those countries on the outside,” she said.
• American Life League has slammed a decision by the Church of Scotland to endorse so-called therapeutic cloning of humans. “The Church of Scotland is seriously misguided when it sanctions a 'clone and kill' policy, whereby human embryos can be created in a laboratory, used for experimental purposes, and destroyed,” said Father Joseph Howard, executive director of the American Bioethics Advisory Commission. The Presbyterian denomination sanctions destructive research on cloned embryos less than 14-days old, because that church does not regard such a cloned person as a “complete human.”
• Zenit News reports that Mexican President Vicente Fox's eldest daughter will help launch a campaign against unwanted pregnancies among adolescents, by promoting sexual abstinence. Ana Cristina Fox, 21, who works as a volunteer for the System for the Integral Development of the Family, will appeal to the conscience of young women, said IDF director Ana Teresa Aranda.
VATICAN SAYS CHURCH TEACHING ON LIFE AND SEXUALITY ARE UNCHANGING
VATICAN (LSN.ca) – The Vatican has declared that Catholics must recognize that Church teachings on the dignity of human life and on human sexuality are unchanging. In an article in the May 16 edition of L'Osservatore Romano, marked by three asterisks signifying the publication was approved at the highest levels of the Vatican, theologians were warned away from the temptation to answer questions “with responses that are more conforming to the sensitivities and expectations of the world than to the thinking of Christ.”
