Life Links 4/13/09

Ron Reagan has an interview at PR.com where he continues to spin in his support of killing human embryos for their stem cells. He even tries to make the “pre-embryo” argument.

We’re actually talking about pre-embryos here. Technically speaking, it’s not an actual embryo yet......

You’re talking about something that’s quite different from the quote un-quote “embryos” that you get from an IVF clinic, and very different from the kind that would be developed in a laboratory. Until a fertilized egg is implanted in the uterus my understanding is it’s not an embryo. It’s a blastocyst, or a pre-embryo.

He also argues for human cloning for research.

On the other hand, you can get your embryonic stem cells by making them in a laboratory taking your skin cell and a donor egg, taking the nucleus out of that egg so you’ve rendered it genetically inert where essentially it has no DNA anymore. You put your skin cell where the nucleus of that egg used to be, then you hit it with some chemicals and magically enough it begins to act as if a conception has taken place. But no conception has ever taken place. This is essentially a fake embryo. It’s not a unique genetic entity.

Reagan does have one thing right.

There’s a great deal of confusion and scientific illiteracy around this issue, and among politicians.

He also calls the Dickey Amendment “the next hurdle to get over.”

The ban has been lifted on funding for embryonic stem cell research, but there’s still legislation in congress that gets renewed every year that will ban federal funding for the creation of embryonic stem cells. That’s the next hurdle to get over.

China has 32 million more men than women because of sex-selective abortion.

In the paper, Zhejiang university professors Wei Xing Zhu and Li Lu and Therese Hesketh of University College London found that in 2005 alone, China had more than 1.1 million excess male births.

Among Chinese aged below 20, the greatest gender imbalances were among one-to-four-year-olds, where there were 124 male to 100 female births, with 126 to 100 in rural areas, they found.

The gap was especially big in provinces where the one-child policy was strictly enforced and also in rural areas.

Jiangxi and Henan provinces had ratios of over 140 male births compared to female births in the 1-4 age group.

Chinese scientists have apparently created mice eggs from stem cells in the ovaries of infant and adult mice.


According to the UK’s Telegraph, the Vatican has blocked Caroline Kennedy as the U.S. ambassador to the Vatican.

Vatican sources told Il Giornale that their support for abortion disqualified Ms Kennedy and other Roman Catholics President Barack Obama had been seeking to appoint.