Life Links 1/1/10

David Prentice writes in the Family Research Council's blog on the call for more embryonic stem cell lines created from African-American embryos.

Of course, it’s also not a surprise that the embryonic stem cell researchers want more embryos, especially minority embryos, from whom to wring their embryonic stem cells. It’s never enough with some of these people. Supposedly having at their disposal several hundred new hESC lines was satisfactory, plus the open-ended promise from President Obama of as many fertility-clinic embryos as they would like. But Michigan’s Sean Morrison

“will also make it a priority to derive new embryonic stem cell lines from underrepresented groups, including African-Americans.”

So, apparently Prof. Morrison is going to be stalking minority couples at IVF clinics, targeting their embryos for his lab. Or soliciting egg and sperm donors to create custom-made embryos specifically for the experiments. Or trying to make cloning work. All of this is legal in the U.S. But not all of this can garner federal taxpayer dollars.

Thankfully, human cloning is illegal in Michigan and Proposal 2 only legalized research on "leftover" IVF embryos. It looks like Morrison will be left to stalking African-American IVF couples or trying to overturn Michigan's human cloning law.

Prentice also notes that a much easier solution would be to get induced pluripotent stem cells from African-American patients.


Wesley Smith explains the Montana Supreme Court decision on assisted suicide. The decision didn't claim physician assisted suicide was a constitutional right but did say it was legal under current law.


At FireDogLake, Jane Hamsher is not at all happy that pro-choice Congresswoman Rose DeLauro is planning on supporting the Nelson abortion language in health care reform.


A woman from Michigan may get less time in jail after an appeals court ruled her 9-18 year sentence for killing her newborn daughter (she plead guilty to manslaughter) was too harsh.