Umbilical Cord Stem Cells Help Children With Type 1 Diabetes

LifeNews.com is reporting that "Another study has been published showing that adult stem cell research has just as much potential, if not more, than embryonic stem cells to help patients with various diseases. In this cases, researchers at University of Florida founds that stem cells from umbilical cord blood helped children newly diagnosed with type 1 diabetes."

"The study found that stem cell transfusions using the adult stem cells helped the children reduce their disease severity, possibly re-setting the immune system and slowing the destruction of their insulin-producing cells." Click here to read more.

This is huge!  It's still experimental, but it shows how wrong embryonic stem cell advocates are to say that president Bush's veto of expanded embryonic stem cell funding for destruction of human embryos shatters hope for sufferers. 

Embryonic Stem Cell Research Is About Cloning

After President Bush's veto last week of an embryonic stem cell funding bill to destroy more human embryos, Molly Dillon of the Nevada Juvenile Diabetes Research said “this (embryonic stem cell research) has nothing to do with cloning…. This is about fertilized eggs from fertility clinics that would otherwise be thrown away as medical waste."

Embryonic Stem Cell Research is a cloning issue because even if the president caved to the powerful biotech industry, it is not likely that these embryos would create the kind of genetic diversity necessary for patient specific matches for mass cures.  Why proceed if there are no mass cures?

To create those genetic matches, researchers believe that cloning, using the same technique that created Dolly the Sheep (somatic cell nuclear transfer-or nuclear transfer), will be necessary to create embryos almost identical to the patient.  The cloned near identical twin would be destroyed for his or her stem cells in the hope that this near match will not be rejected.

This is also a woman's issue because cloning technology requires unfertilized eggs. Dolly the Sheep was created after the 276th attempt.  Even if cloning were to become much more efficient, it would require vast and enormous amounts of unfertilized eggs to create matches for the 100+ million Americans who could benefit.  This would involve hyper-ovulatory drugs and surgery to get the eggs.  Risks include infertility.

If women are not willing to be exploited for this kind of research and therapy-if it can work, researchers are likely to use rabbits or other animals for those eggs.

Non embryonic stem cell would not require any of this.

Embryonic Stem Cell Research Is A Right To Life Issue

In the wake of President Bush's veto of legislation that would have expanded funding for embryonic stem cell research and funded the destruction of human embryos,   Molly Dillon of the Nevada Juvenile Diabetes Research says "this (embryonic stem cell research) has nothing to do with cloning. This is about fertilized eggs from fertility clinics that would otherwise be thrown away as medical waste. It's not a right-to-life issue, it's a right-to-quality-of-life issue."

This is a right to life issue and it is about cloning.  Human embryonic stem cell research is wrong-as we noted in the same RGJ article, because "No human being is expendable for science or anything else." Embryonic stem cell research kills human embryos.  It doesn't matter how small human embryos are.  It doesn't matter that they are going to be thrown away or that some hypothetical good could come of it.  It is offensive and demeaning to human dignity to say that any human being is "medical waste."

That's because human beings have inherent ultimate value.  This ultimate value is intrinsic to us and woven into the fabric of our being.  It's not earned, achieved, nor grown into or gradually realized.  It does not depend on our size, our circumstances, being wanted or valued by others.  We are not expendable because our demise could benefit others.  Our ultimate infinite value belongs to us by our existence as human beings from the first moment of our existence.  Once anyone becomes expendable, everyone becomes negotiable.  There's no way to firewall the proposition that certain humans are expendable and keep it from ultimately impacting others. So this is a right to life issue. That makes it an ethical issue.   

Hopes NOT Shattered By Bush Veto

On June 20th, President Bush again vetoed legislation that would overturn his embryonic stem cell research policy.  Critics of the President's veto in Nevada say that this removes hope for sufferers.  These critics cannot be taken seriously. 

In an article in the Reno Gazette Journal, Bob Fulkerson of the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada said President Bush, "with the stroke of a pen, struck away the hopes and dreams" of cures for chronic illnesses.  “It's a shame (Bush) is kow-towing to a very small group instead of doing what's best for the American people suffering from chronic ailments.”  Mylan Hawkins, executive director of the Nevada Diabetes Association said, “We are deeply saddened that once again the hope for so many Americans who suffer with incurable conditions has been shattered.”  Planned Parenthood's Allison Gauldin told KOH that thinking that adult stem cells are superior is naive.

It is obvious to anyone with a little knowledge about the research that embryonic stem cell research is not the only hope-if it has any hope at all.  There is plenty of hope beyond embryonic stem cell research and embryonic stem cell research appears to show NO hope at all.  When the president announced his veto a woman who had her bladder replaced with one made from her own stem cells was standing with the president.  This month we learned that diabetic participants in a Brazilian study went off of insulin for long periods of time after being treated with their own stem cells.   Another woman Carol Franz; of Las Vegas was also with the president.  She has beaten cancer twice by using her own adult stem cells.  Who's naive?

You would think that people speaking for sufferers and working for relief and cures for their ailments would know that there are over 70 benefits for human sufferers through non embryonic and adult stem cells.  There are well over 1000 human trials.  There are no human embryonic stem cell benefits or trials.

There is also hope beyond stem cell research.  Two stories have appeared in the last few days that have nothing to do with any kind of stem cell research.  One concerns an experimental Parkinson’s trial using gene therapy.  The other is about a promising Alzheimer’s vaccine which attacks the plaque build up in the brain.  Those possibilities have nothing to do with stem cell research at all. 

It is utterly irresponsible and unconscionable to crush hopes of sufferers by telling them that if the President will not expand their preferred-and for many, their politically preferred-option, that they have no hope. 

We should expect that the people above would know about these things and understand that these are huge reasons for hope.   And critics should think twice before calling pro-life ideas naïve.  What is truly naive saying there is no hope after researchers began taking back their promises this summer.  Instead of cures, they are now talking about models for understanding disease.  That is a far cry from the miraculous cures that are said to be at our fingertips if the president would open the treasury to the special interests of the biotech lobby. 

We may cure many of the diseases that concern us most before embryonic stem cells ever get a human trial.  Embryonic stem cell advocates may not notice.

Rewriting History: The FOCA Findings, HR 1964:1

HR 1964, the Freedom for Partial Birth Abortionists Act… I mean the Freedom of Choice Act is a classic example of rewriting history.  For instance, finding 5 says:

(5) These decisions (Roe v. Wade, Griswold, Doe v. Bolton and etc)have protected the health and lives of women in the United States. Prior to the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, an estimated 1,200,000 women each year were forced to resort to illegal abortions, despite the risk of unsanitary conditions, incompetent treatment, infection, hemorrhage, disfiguration, and death. Before Roe, it is estimated that thousands of women died annually in the United States as a result of illegal abortions.

Give me a break.  If there were 1.2 million illegal abortions in unsanitary conditions per year before Roe, why did abortion go down to 750,000 abortions the year after Roe when those same doctors who let women in through the back alley were now legal?  There weren’t 1.2 million abortions per year until 1977.  There were probably 100-200,000 abortion a year, legal and illegal, in the years before Roe. 

Were those doctors incompetent back alley butchers?  That depends on when you ask abortion advocates.  That’s the mantra now, but in 1960 Planned Parenthood’s Mary Calderone noted that almost all illegal abortions were performed by licensed physicians in good standing.

What about the 5-10,000 women who were dying every year?  Didn't happen.  Bernard Nathanson one of the founders of NARAL writes,  "How many deaths were we talking about when abortion was illegal? In NARAL, we generally emphasized the frame of the individual case, not the mass statistics, but when we spoke of the latter it was always ‘5,000 to 10,000 deaths a year.’ I confess that I knew the figures were totally false, and I suppose the others did too if they stopped to think of it. But in the ‘morality’ of our revolution, it was a useful figure, widely accepted, so why go out of our way to correct it with honest statistics? The overriding concern was to get the laws eliminated, and anything within reason that had to be done was permissible." B. Nathanson, Aborting America, Doubleday, 1979, p. 193”

A thousand women a year died from abortion in the 40’s, but with the availability of antibiotics and improving trauma care, this was reduced to 39 deaths in 1972, the year before Roe. The findings are nonsense.

So Much For Choice-Abortion Advocates Are The New Totalitarians

Life News.com is reporting that "Abortion advocates in Congress have introduced new legislation that would force pharmacists across the country to dispense birth control and the morning after pill, which can cause an abortion in some instances. Under the bill, pharmacists who decline to dispense such drugs could be required to pay as much as $500,000 in fines."

So much for choice.  The mantra of choice is a fraud.  They never meant it anyway.  Don't agree with abortion advocates' choice, then you can pay.  $500,000 in fines.  These people are the new totalitarians.

What's next?  If you are a pharmacist and don't fill a prescription for suicide, or a doctor and don't want to do an abortion, or a Catholic heath network and you don't want to provide coverage against your morals-I forgot, they already are forced to do that in California, you will pay fines for that too?

In Nevada, abortion advocates wanted to fine pharmacists $10,000 and take away their licenses.  One pharmacist I spoke with in rural NV was the only pharmacist serving many thousands of people.  He said he'd leave the state and he thought no one would come to take his place, especially with the national pharmacist shortage.  But who cares about the needs of those thousands of Nevadans?  Abortion advocates want what they want when and how they want it.

There's No Defending Partial Birth Abortion

This Nevada LIFE's op-ed on Partial Birth Abortion that was recently published in the Reno Gazette Journal.  It may be available at the RGJ or you can access it at our site.

Opinion-There's No Defending Banned Procedure

May 18, 2007

In the weeks since the partial birth abortion decision, it's clear that abortion proponents are sticking to their game plan: don't say anything about the unborn child. The reason is clear: partial birth abortions are so revolting that even a clinical description causes us to shudder.

In a partial birth abortion, the unborn child is pulled feet first from the womb until only his head is left inside. The abortionist punctures the skull with scissors, inserts a tube and sucks the brains out.

Nurse Brenda Shafer's testimony of the partial birth abortion she witnessed was cited by the court. "The baby's little fingers were clasping and unclasping, and his feet were kicking. Then the doctor stuck the scissors through the back of his head, and the baby's arms jerked out in a flinch, a startle reaction, like a baby does when he thinks that he might fall. The doctor opened up the scissors, stuck a high-powered suction tube into the opening and sucked the baby's brains out."

How can anyone defend a procedure where a doctor kills a child dangling from the womb inches from birth?

That question led Congress to act. Congress argued that "implicitly approving such a brutal and inhumane procedure by choosing not to prohibit it will further coarsen society to the humanity of not only newborns, but all vulnerable and innocent human life, making it increasingly difficult to protect such life." And "partial-birth abortion " confuses the medical, legal and ethical duties of physicians to preserve and promote life, as the physician acts directly against the physical life of a child, whom he or she had just delivered, all but the head, out of the womb, in order to end that life."

The court agreed that a description of the procedure "demonstrates the rationale" for the ban and that Congress can use its powers "to promote respect for life, including life of the unborn." Substantial majorities, pro-life and pro-choice, agree.

Abortion advocates usually respond that partial birth abortions happen as a result of "wanted pregnancies" going horribly wrong. But partial birth abortionists say that almost all partial birth abortions are performed for women whose unborn child poses no risk to her physical well-being.

Justice Ginsburg's dissent argued, among other things, that women's "ability to realize their full potential, the Court recognized, is intimately connected to 'their ability to control their reproductive lives.' ... Thus, legal challenges ... center on a woman's autonomy to determine her life's course, and thus to enjoy equal citizenship stature." The "Casey Court described the centrality of 'the decision whether to bear ... a child,' to a woman's 'dignity and autonomy,' her 'personhood' and 'destiny,' her 'conception of ... her place in society.'"

Here Ginsburg makes the leading abortion feminist argument that partial birth abortion and abortion are necessary to fulfill a woman's potential and to achieve or protect her equal standing in society. That has to be news to most women. Ginsburg's argument is dangerous because it says that equality is not a property inherent to women. It also says that children are obstacles and expendable in the pursuit of these ends.

The gruesomeness of partial birth abortion and the arguments for it are the reasons large majorities of Americans oppose it. It's about time the court got something right on abortion.