Monday, November 07, 2011

Life Links 11/7/11

Prolifers in Loganville, Georgia used Halloween as a time to educate the children in their community about fetal development. Some parents weren't happy about this.
"It was a great event with one exception: There was a pro-life group of some kind handing out 12-week-old fetus toys to the children. A man handed one of the so-called toys to my 3-year-old grandson. He asked what it was. The man that handed it to him told him, ‘This is a 12-week-old fetus. This is what you looked like in your mommy's belly,'" Loganville resident John Ramsey said. "There is a time and place for everything. This event for handing out candy to small children was not the time or the place to be handing out toys about pro-life......

"This ability to see how complex, fragile and precious life is, even at 12 weeks, is an amazing experience for children," Edmonds said. "We were told by two people this year that they enjoyed the displays but did not want to have other discussions about early life development with their children for another few years, and one person did voice concern to a city council member who was at the event. Other than that, we had a wonderful response from all of the attendees.

A Vermont man has been sentenced to 5 years in jail for attacking his son's girlfriend and threatening to kill her and her unborn child.
The Caledonian Record said Comeau was arrested in 2009 after terrorizing his 31-year-old son and his son's 23-year-old girlfriend. The girlfriend told police Comeau was drunk when he pushed her down, kicked her and grabbed her by the throat telling her he was going to kill her and her baby.

A Massachusetts man plans on pleading insanity after being charged with killing his girlfriend and an unborn child his girlfriend said wasn't his.
Peter Ronchi, 48, is charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the May 2009 slaying of Yuliya Galperina, who was due to give birth within days.

The Los Angeles Times has an article on scientists attempting to figure how to use embryonic stem cells to treat diabetes. Since embryonic stem cells isn't a political issues anymore, we get to hear that cures aren't anywhere near being around the corner.
But fine-tuning the cells to make them safe and effective for human use will take time. For example, beta cells do more than just produce insulin; they also respond to body cues to produce just the right amount of insulin when it's needed and thus regulate glucose levels with great precision. If you make beta cells that produce too much insulin, the level of glucose can drop dangerously low — and people can pass out, lapse into a coma or even die.....

Another major problem facing a cure in humans is the issue of autoimmunity — the problem that causes Type 1 diabetes in the first place. "Even if we are able to generate beta cells from stem cells, if you put them into a patient with Type 1 diabetes, they'll be eliminated quickly, because the immune system is primed to destroy those cells," Hebrok says.

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