Life Links 5/30/07

An article in the Asian Times about China's most recent problems with its one-child policy and the rise of abortion among unmarried Chinese women.


Ramesh Ponnuru discusses why abortion should doom Giuliani's campaign.

How much more could Giuliani have done to make abortion prevalent in New York? Murdock's standard — that he didn't go out of his way to promote abortion in what has rightly been called the country's "abortion capital" — amounts to giving Giuliani credit for not going around performing abortions himself.

A politician and former pastor running for a Virginia State Senate seat recently was quoted as comparing the issue of abortion to a just war.

Cox said a discussion about abortion rights could be linked to that of a "just war," when killing might be justified toward a greater good. Like Hrovat, he said life was sacred. Unlike his opponent, Cox declared the right to an abortion should remain with the individual, not with the government.

I wonder if infanticide could be justified on those grounds as well.


The biotechnology company Neurastem, Inc. has a press release announcing they used human spinal stem cells to successful treat rats who had been paralyzed by spinal ischemia.

According to lead investigator Dr. Martin Marsala, "In this study, we demonstrated that grafting human neural cells directly into the spinal cord leads to a progressive recovery of motor function. This could be an effective treatment for patients suffering from the same kind of ischemia-induced paralysis. We are currently studying hSSCs in paralyzed mini-pigs, who have similar spinal cord anatomy as human spinal cords."

Harvest Technologies Corp. has a press release announcing they've been given approval by the FDA to "commence a 48-patient 'feasibility' clinical trial using the company's BMAC System to treat patients with Critical Limb Ischemia (CLI). The BMAC System is a point-of-care device for concentrating a patient's own (autologous) bone marrow stem cells in approximately 15 minutes. The study's design provides for injecting these cells into the affected limb to reduce the potential for limb amputation. It is believed that the injection of stem cells will arrest and possibly reverse the effects of CLI, a late-stage form of Peripheral Arterial Disease (PAD)."