Stem Cell Links

Six Stem Cell Facts by Robert George and Father Thomas Berg

Most scientists acknowledge that ESCs will not provide therapies for many years, if ever. Their therapeutic potential is, at best, speculative. They cannot be used now, even in clinical trials, because of their tendency to produce tumors. So it comes as no surprise that many scientists now admit that their primary interest in pursuing ESC research lies not in the hope for direct cell transplant therapies, but in the desire to enhance basic scientific knowledge of such things as cell signaling, tissue growth and early human development.

The Baltimore Sun has an article about the importance of words in the stem cell debate.


California's U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein delusionally thinks embryonic stem cell researchers are "handcuffed" even though her state will be doling out billions of dollars to them in the next decade. We should also know that "the hopes of millions of Americans depend on" President Bush changing his mind about the federal funding of killing human embryos.

"Forceps encrusted in brownish blood-like residues"

That was one of the reasons the New Jersey state health department has temporarily closed down the Metropolitan Medical Associates in Englewood according to this story in the Record.

Inspectors also found opened packs of items which were supposed to be sterilized, rusty crotchet hooks (which were used to remove IUDs), and "a quarter-inch of dark red "dirt and debris" under an exam table."

The clinic also couldn't prove they had anyone in control of infection control and the person who was supposedly in charge of it wasn't trained and couldn't recall being in charge of it. Also,

In separate records released Tuesday, investigators concluded the facility failed to notify the department "of an event occurring within the facility that jeopardized the health and safety of a patient." The department refused to release details of the "event."

The department also found that the patient's medical and operative records were incomplete.

"The operative report was not immediately completed following the procedure because Staff Member #1 reported being 'superstitious' and was aware that Patient #1 had emergency surgery performed and was waiting for the results," investigators wrote. The patient has since sued for malpractice.

Pro-choice advocates spend a lot of time lamenting on the poor conditions of illegal abortions in foreign countries yet I've heard not a word from abortion advocates (like the National Abortion Federation) about these seedy conditions at one of their own facilities.

This case also shows how some abortion providers work to cover up their mistakes and don't follow the law about reporting abortion complications to the state health department.

Related:
Another less than safe abortion clinic
More on shady abortion clinic
Still more on the Metropolitan Medical Associates

Tags: abortion clinic, new jersey, metropolitan medical associates

"It just hurts so bad!!!! Yes, I feel like I am murdering my own child!"

So says a pro-choice woman who is pregnant with her fourth child. Yet she thinks abortion is the right decision in her situation. Plus, her boyfriend, who is 20 years older, is pushing her to have an abortion because he doesn't want his father (a pastor) to find out he had sex outside of marriage.

Life Links 3/13/07

The bodies of two unborn children were found in a storage shed after a woman admitted to self-aborting after her husband's suicide. The police got a tip after the woman told friends. How does that subject come in conversation?


Rich Lowry: Who Cares About Abortion?


Rudy Giuliani hates abortion? My behind.


Researchers at the University of Michigan have that a type of stem cells in lungs "may be able to help with lung disease and donated organ rejection."

Baby got book

This is about a year old but I hadn't seen it until today.

"It's worn, it's torn and I know that girl's reborn."

"39 plus 27 equals 66 books. And if you're Catholic, there's even more."

Friday Cat Blogging

In case you wondered whether cats like to be put in a Christmas stocking.



They don't.

They can't wait to start misrepresenting prolife legislation, huh? Totally believable.

Jessica at Feministing and at the BushvChoice blog links to an article about Mississippi's trigger law to ban abortion except in the cases of life of the mother and rape once Roe v. Wade is overturned. After quoting the article about the legislation and how someone guilty of performing an illegal abortion would spend 1 to 10 years in jail, Jessica exclaims,

They just can't wait to start punishing women, huh? Unbelievable.

Too bad Jessica probably hasn't actually read the legislation because if she did that basic research she might have known the law says specifically that women won't be punished for performing abortions on themselves (my emphasis below).

Any person, except the pregnant woman, who purposefully, knowingly or recklessly performs or attempts to perform or induce an abortion in the State of Mississippi, except in the case where necessary for the preservation of the mother's life or where the pregnancy was caused by rape, upon conviction, shall be punished by imprisonment in the custody of the Department of Corrections for not less than one (1) year nor more than ten (10) years.

But hey, why do simple research like reading legislation before commenting on it when you can just pigeonhole prolifers as people who just want to punish women?

Tags: abortion, mississippi, pro-choice bloggers

Life Links 3/9/07

Ramesh Ponnuru on prolife litmus tests.

One thing I think is often missing when talking about Giuliani's positions on life issues is his position on other life issues like the funding of embryonic stem cell research and human cloning for research and even the funding of international groups which promote abortions overseas. He promises to appoint the right kind of judges but will he promise to continue the Mexico City Policy and prevent tax dollars from being used to kill human embryos? Probably not.


Beverly Nuckols explains how embryonic stem cells need to be changed into adult stem cells before they can be used.

The answers are obvious if you think about it -- even the "embryonic proponents" are trying to make adult stem cells.

None of the treatments involved in therapy - now or in any likely future therapies - are actual embryonic stem cells, because the cells we need will only function in specific conditions and surroundings. The specific conditions and surroundings are only found in place, in the actual site of damage.

Embryonic stem cells function is to make embryonic tissues and must develop into precursors and then specific tissues. The "gold standard" test for embryonic stem cells is their ability to make tumors called teratomas in mice. And this is what they would do in any body, as long as they are "embryonic stem cells."

It's all about the patents, baby! An editorial in the journal Stem Cell says isolated stem cell lines should be patented. When researchers like the University of Michigan's Sean Morrison tell you they need to create their own embryonic stem cell lines, it's not because those stem cell lines are somehow going to work better than other embryonic stem cell lines or being able to create kill embryos is somehow going to create thousands of jobs. It's because they want the patents.

Life Links 3/8/07

Catholic World News is reporting the baby boy from Italy who survived an abortion has died.


Missourians aren't going to accept human cloning in Missouri without a fight.


Richard Doerflinger lists 75 New Reasons to Reconsider the Alleged Need for Stem Cell Research which Destroys Human Embryos.

Attempt to kill unborn child because of supposed abnormalities fails and it turns out there weren't abnormalities

A baby in Italy is struggling to survive after an attempted abortion at 22 weeks failed. The reason for the abortion was because there were indications the child had digestive system abnormalities (which are correctable, by the way). After the child was born alive, it was discovered the child didn't have the abnormalities.

Michigan's financial woes

Greg Kaza paints the picture of Michigan's continuous single state recession and how the economies of western states are expanding. Will Governor Granholm take note? Not likely.

Tags: granholm, michigan, financial crisis

Life Links 3/7/07

A woman in the Boston area named Jennifer Raper is suing Planned Parenthood for child rearing costs after one of Planned Parenthood's abortionist failed at killing her unborn child in 2004. She is also suing another doctor who failed to detect her pregnancy months after the failed abortion.


The Metropolitan Medical Associates abortion clinic in Englewood, New Jersey has failed to pass its follow-up investigation 12 days after being closed up by the health department of the state of New Jersey. The clinic had assured the health department that it had taken care of its violations.


The Detroit News has a good article on umbilical cord blood and how to donate umbilical cord blood in Michigan.


The National Catholic Register isn't about to accept Rudy Giulani's position on abortion.

We're sorry, but we don't see what is so unreasonable about the right to life. We've seen ultrasounds, we've named our babies in the womb, we've seen women destroyed by abortion. What looks supremely unreasonable to us is that we should trust a leader who not doesn't only reject the right to life but even supports partial-birth abortion, which is more infanticide than abortion.

Life Links 3/6/07

Here's a spectacularly bad editorial on stem cell research entitled "Stem cell research is the only hope for our future" by Cal-State Fullerton student Cindy Cafferty. Paging Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Probably the worst part is when Cafferty tries to explain the financial cost of Proposition 73 (6 billion dollars "might cost us a penny or two") and then acts like California's taxes ( 7.25% sales tax, which is highest in the nation and 9.3% income tax if you make more than $40,000 ) - aren't that bad ("California, comparatively speaking, is in the bottom of income tax revenue collection by national standards").


An Iowan takes issue with the DesMoines Register's assertion that "Destroying (human embryos) isn't the same as destroying a human life."


Stuart Taylor has a prediction on how the Supreme Court will rule on the federal partial-birth abortion ban amongst other predictions.

Abortion. The Roberts Court has already voted in a big abortion case, on the constitutionality of the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. But we probably won't know who won until June.

Pro-choicers noisily fear, and pro-lifers hope, that the Court will uphold this congressional ban on a late-term abortion procedure likened by critics to infanticide because the fetus is destroyed when mostly outside the womb. In the process, many predict, the justices will overrule a major 2000 decision striking down a very similar Nebraska ban. O'Connor was the fifth vote then. Alito is now, and this will be the first salvo in a conservative assault on Roe v. Wade.

My predictions are different: The Court will indeed uphold the federal "partial-birth" ban -- thanks to the Alito-O'Connor swap -- but only by construing it so narrowly that it will have very little effect. And the Court will never overrule Roe v. Wade.

Specifically, the justices will limit the federal ban to "D&X," or dilation and extraction, abortions, the most grisly late-term procedure, and exempt "D&E," or dilation and evacuation, abortions, which are much more common. The Court may also carve out an exception to the ban for those exceedingly rare cases in which more than a few medical experts consider D&X safer than D&E. The justices will narrow but stop short of overruling the 2000 Nebraska decision.

During the argument on this case, Roberts seemed to be pushing for a narrow interpretation of the federal ban. Such a split-the-difference approach might appeal to the conflicted Kennedy; he is the fifth pro-Roe vote, but he wanted to uphold the Nebraska "partial-birth" ban. In future cases, the justices will narrow Roe v. Wade (as they started doing in 1992) but strike down any state laws making it difficult for most women to get abortions.

Amazing Ignorance

At ProlifeBlogs, Barbara links to an article in the Columbia Tribune which discusses ministers, rabbis and other religious people who are pro-choice.

Blake's 40 years of supporting reproductive choice began when he was a medical student and saw women who had been mutilated by illegal abortion, he said.

"Millions of women had illegal abortions," he said. "Only a small percentage had abortions that were performed by people that knew what they were doing."

How does one square that quote with the following quote from Dr. Mary Calderone (medical director of Planned Parenthood at the time) in the American Journal of Health in 1960?

"...90% of all illegal abortions are done by physicians. Call them what you will, abortionists or anything else, they are still physicians, trained as such; and many are in good standing in their communities. Whatever trouble arises usually comes after self-induced abortions, which comprise approximately 8 percent, or with the very small percentage that go to some kind of non-medical abortionist. Another corollary fact: physicians of impeccable standing are referring their patients for these illegal abortions to colleagues they know are willing to perform them."

Another classic quote from the pro-choice religious crowd:

Brown said he believes the right to reproductive choice is inborn and connected to being created in God's image and free will.

Do you get that? So being created in the image of God gives us certain rights, including the right to kill another being created in the image of God?

Still more really bad arguments. One Bonnie Shapero:

"My feeling has been all along if the government can tell you that you can't have an abortion, that is very close to the government telling you that you have to have an abortion."

What utter nonsense. They're not very close. They're polar opposites. For example, "My feeling has been all along if the government can tell you that you can't steal, that is very close to the government telling you that you have to steal. If the government can tell you that you can't rape, that is very close to the government telling you that you have to rape. If the government can tell you that you can't murder, that is very close to government telling you that you have to murder. If the government can tell you that you can't snort cocaine, that is very close to the government telling you that you have to snort cocaine. If the government can tell you that same sex people can't marry, that is very close to the government telling you that you have to marry someone of the same sex." What other issue could someone say something so completely unreasoned and incoherent and not get laughed at by everyone around them?

Another from Rebecca Turner:

Turner said the MORCRC's bottom line is "because religions do not agree on the beginning of life, ensoulment or when abortion is a morally acceptable choice, the government cannot legislate one religious view over another.

Bad assumption: The belief that life begins at conception is a religious view.

Bad argument: Because different religion take different positions on what is morally acceptable, the government cannot (or should not) speak legislatively on an issue where there is disagreement among religions.

What would be consequences of such an argument? Human sacrifice would be legal because some religions call for it. Some Muslims religious leaders think killing certain non-Muslims is morally acceptable so therefore the government shouldn't speak legislatively on whether Muslims can kill non-Muslim. Some church leaders might even think it is morally acceptable to bomb abortion clinics so killing abortionists shouldn't be legislated according to Turner's argument.

I sometimes think that the people who attempt to defend abortion on religious grounds often come up with some the worst arguments for why abortion should be legal.

Tags: abortion, religion, pro-choice

Still more on the Metropolitan Medical Associates

After hearing about Rasheedah Dinkins' lawsuit against abortionists Keith Gresham and Nicholas Kotopoulos of the Metropolitan Medical Associates, a woman named Christina Ruvolo has come forward to talk about her abortion complications at MMA.

"They didn't finish it," Ruvolo said. "There was a part of the baby inside."
....
She said she tried to talk to a doctor after the second procedure resulted in complications, but the staff would not help her.

Another woman named Gloria Mozas has also come forward and is suing the abortion clinic for injuries she suffered in 2003.

Are we smarter than a fifth grader?

Bryan Kemper points out how in describing what the unborn are, adults are often not smarter than fifth-graders.

National Day of Appreciation for Abortion Providers

At least one organization, the National Abortion Federation, is gearing up to celebrate and honor people who make a living killing unborn children. The irony is that they're doing this while one of their abortion providers is being sued because they put a woman in a coma for a month. I'm guessing Rasheedah Dinkins won't be signing that petition anytime soon.

Life Links 3/2/07

Michael Fumento on the "false adult stem cell paper" that wasn't false.


Frank Beckmann: Civility can still reign even on divisive issue of abortion

Though Tim Stickel's kindness towards the protestors was commendable, I believe he could have given some better answers to their questions.


Adult stem cells might eventually be able to help treat male infertility.

These data demonstrate that bone marrow stem cells have the potential to differentiate into cells of the testes involved in sperm production, both germ cells and supporting cells. Interestingly, the germ cells did not differentiate fully into sperm, suggesting that additional factors or cellular signals are needed.

Future studies will characterize the other factors, such as hormones, required to complete sperm production in this transplant model. In addition, since the bone marrow cells used here represent a mixed population of stem cells, further studies will determine which specific stem cell type was able to colonize and differentiate in the testes. The results of future studies could have dramatic implications for treating male infertility or testosterone deficiency.

The abstract of the study is here.

More on the shady abortion clinic in Englewood, New Jersey

After being temporarily shut down by the state of New Jersey, Metropolitan Medical Associates is getting sued by a woman named Rasheedah Dinkins who spent a month in a coma after her abortion.

Dinkins, 20, felt ill after undergoing the abortion, and had to be rushed to a hospital by ambulance after she passed out at her home, her family said.

Once there, she was given blood transfusions and had her uterus removed, Slater said. The attorney also said Dinkins suffered a stroke due to serious blood loss, and one of her lungs collapsed.

Tags: abortion clinic, lawsuit

More Cloning Deception in Iowa

Iowa Governor Chet Culver signed a bill into law to legalize human cloning for research. At the signing he said ,

"Today, thousands of Iowans who have been affected by serious illness and disease now have hope."

Do you think Culver actually believes this? I can't imagine how ticked off I would be if I had a horrible disease and politicians like Culver were continually telling me that this research would save my life only to find out this research is never going to come anywhere near saving my life. I guess human cloning for research proponents hope people with diseases have short memories.

Culver also said,

I want to thank everyone who has been fighting for this life-saving research for the last five years since the stem cell research ban went into effect.

Things to note:
1. Human cloning for research hasn't come anywhere near helping any human patient much less saving a single life so how can Culver call it "life-saving?"
2. Did the Iowa legislature ban stem cell research or did they ban human cloning for research five years ago? Why can't proponents of human cloning for research be honest about what they want?

The absolute vileness of these people. It makes my skin crawl.

Related:
Our argument is we have no argument

Debating Human Cloning Legislation in Iowa