Life Links 3/4/09

Abortion mill owner Belkis Gonzalez has been charged with "a second-degree felony count of unlicensed practice of a health care profession resulting in serious bodily injury and a third-degree felony count of tampering with or fabricating physical evidence" for her role in the death of Shanice Williams, a child who was born-alive during an abortion. According to the CNN story above, she faces a maximum of a year in jail while this Miami Herald story says the Gonzalez could face 15 years behind bars.

Unfortunately, no murder charges will be filed because, depending on whose defending the lack of a murder charge, Shanice was too young to survive outside the womb or because they can't prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Shanice was born alive.


Mona Charen on the most recent iPS cell breakthrough:

Advocates of embryonic-stem-cell research (who, by the way, are waiting impatiently for President Obama to reverse President Bush’s limitation on the kinds of research the federal government will fund) seem almost not to welcome alternatives to embryonic research. It’s as if agreeing to pursue other methods acknowledges a moral problem they wish to deny. Their arguments in favor of using embryos attempt to minimize the moral weight of the situation. “These are embryos left over from the in vitro fertilization process. No one is using them anyway. They might as well be used for the betterment of mankind.”

Australian scientists have discovered the a way of curing muscular dystrophy and myopathy in mice using adult stem cells. They're hoping it will work with humans as well.

Using adult stem cells, a team of researchers from the University of NSW and the Children's Hospital at Westmead have found that by replacing the bad gene in stem cells and then using chemotherapy, the muscle can repair and regrow.

Professor Peter Gunning, from the University of NSW school of medical sciences, said the aim was to cure people who had the diseases.

"What we are aiming to do is regenerate the muscle permanently," he said. The procedure has been successful on mice but has yet to be tested on humans.

Wesley Smith on Severino Antinori's claim that he successfully cloned three human children 9 years ago.

So let me get this straight: Scientists all over the world have not been able to create cloned embryos and maintain them past the first few days of development. But nine years ago Antinori not only cloned successfully, but also implanted the resulting embryos for gestation and to birth, and moreover, unlike many animals, they have no health problems--and publicity hound that he is he kept quiet about it all these years?