Continue reading Researchers pioneer new method to generate non-embryonic stem cells :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)In what one expert calls a “major paper,” researchers have reported new advances in creating efficient and safe alternatives to human embryonic stem cells.
A team led by Derrick J. Rossi of the Children’s Hospital Boston used laboratory-made versions of natural biological signals to quickly convert ordinary skin cells into cells that appear virtually identical to embryonic stem cells. They can then coax these cells to change into specific tissues that would be a match for transplantation into patients, the Washington Post reports
2nd October 2010
SPANIARDS have reacted with fury to the news that two convicted Eta terrorists are undergoing IVF treatment in prison at the State's expense.
Fernando Garcia Jodra, 40, and his girlfriend Nerea Bengoa Zarisolo, 39, are hoping to become parents despite the fact that both have been condemned to minimum jail terms of 30 years after being found guilty in 2004 of four murders.
They are held in separate prisons and are not allowed physical contact, communicating only by letters, which are checked and censored. It is their right, however, under Spanish law, to apply to have IVF treatment in jail.
Continue reading Anger at IVF treatment for jailed terrorist couple | Courier Mail
FAR from bringing equality, contraception has redistributed power away from women, says George Pell.Continue reading at The Australian
THIS year is the 50th anniversary of the contraceptive pill, a development that has changed Western life enormously, in some ways most people do not understand.
While majority opinion regards the pill as a significant social benefit for giving women greater control of their fertility, the consensus is not overwhelming, especially among women.
A May CBS News poll of 591 adult Americans found that 59 per cent of men and 54 per cent of women believed the pill had made women's lives better.
In an article in the ecumenical journal First Things that month, North American economist Timothy Reichert approached the topic with "straight-forward microeconomic reasoning", concluding that contraception had triggered a redistribution of wealth and power from women and children to men.
By Diogenes | August 24, 2010 Catholic Culture
Read all the mainstream-media coverage of Judge Royce Lamberth’s decision to stop federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research, and you may notice that two major themes emerge. Neither theme is inaccurate, yet both are misleading.
First, the conventional accounts remind readers that embryonic stem-cell research (ESCR) has great potential.
It is “promising but controversial research,” says the Wall Street Journal. It is a “promising new science,” Time magazine agrees. Scientists “hope to be able to use” ESCR to treat many diseases, Reuters reports. The Los Angeles Times cites a White House spokesman who said judge’s decision “carries the potential to block ‘critical, life-saving research.’" [My emphasis throughout]
Promise... promising… potential…hope. What you don’t see, in all those news accounts, is a report that scientists have used ESCR successfully to treat diseases, or are using ESCR in clinical settings right now. You don’t even read about successful ESCR experiments that could soon lead to medical breakthroughs.
Continue reading at Catholic Culture : Off the Record : promise them anything
19th August 2010 – Helene Guldberg, Spiked.
Experts should know better than to claim that great apes can communicate in a similar way to human beings.
Time and again, we are told that humans are not that special after all: abilities previously thought to be uniquely human are now purportedly evident amongst the great apes. The most recent claim, published in the current issue of the Royal Society journal Biology Letters, is that orang-utans use mime to make themselves understood.
Continue reading Orang-utans are not remotely like humans at Spiked.
August 2010. Catholic News Agency (CNA)
By Richard Doerflinger
In 1998, Dr. James Thomson of the University of Wisconsin first isolated human embryonic stem cells (ESCs). These early, unspecialized cells were hailed as a way to create all cell types of the human body at will, a Holy Grail for curing diseases. Moral qualms about killing embryos for the cells were swept away in this wave of enthusiasm. In a few years, it was said, life-saving medical advances would show that such objections should be ignored.
A decade later, it is time for a reality check. ESCs have been involved in some interesting experiments, but are not close to producing cures. This is not due to limited federal funding—it is equally true in countries with no such limits, and in states pouring their own public funds into the research. ESCs in fact are unpredictable, difficult to control, and prone to causing tumors in animals. Experts now admit that human treatments using them may not emerge for decades, if ever.
The bishops’ statement Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship urges Catholics to become informed on important moral issues in public life, including this issue of destroying embryos for stem cell research.
'The great irony of the guidelines is that research involving stem cells safely derived from human adults and other sources presents the same if not greater potential for medical breakthroughs, without any of the troubling legal and ethical issues related to embryonic stem-cell research.' 'The majority of the almost 50,000 comments that the NIH received were opposed to funding this research, and by its own admission, NIH totally ignored these comments'.Continue reading at Catholic Online
Read full article at the New Oxford Review“… perhaps we might begin to suspect that the atheist's position is rooted not in the intellect but in the will. Is it possible that the atheist does not want God to exist, and that he therefore orders his intellect to supply the necessary objections? It certainly seems so. There isn't any reasonable argument why men should choose to live in a purposeless universe and be doomed to eternal death. It becomes all the less reasonable a choice when we remember that there is not and cannot be any shred of proof that God does not exist or that we exist without an ultimate purpose. Then why choose atheism? Why would anybody want God not to exist?”
HAWKING POSITS FALSE CONFLICT
June 8, 2010
Catholic League president Bill Donohue took exception to Hawking's views today:
How any rational person could belittle the pivotal role that human life plays in the universe is a wonder, but it is just as silly to say that all religions are marked by the absence of reason. While there are some religions which are devoid of reason, there are others, such as Roman Catholicism, which have long assigned it a special place.
It was the Catholic Church that created the first universities, and it was the Catholic Church that played a central role in the Scientific Revolution; these two historical contributions made possible Mr. Hawking's career.
Reason, in pursuit of truth, has been reiterated by the Church fathers for nearly two millennia. That is why Hawking posits a false conflict: in the annals of the Catholic Church, there is no inherent conflict between science and religion. Quite the contrary: science and religion, in Catholic thought, are complementary properties. Ergo, nothing is gained by alleging a "victory" of science over religion.
Religion without reason, Pope Benedict XVI instructed us in his Regensburg address in 2006, leads to fanaticism. That much Hawking seems to understand. What he doesn't get is its contra: science without faith also leads to disaster—the genocidal regimes in Germany, the Soviet Union, China and Cambodia being Exhibits A, B, C and D.
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It’s not uncommon for Hawking to make some fairly bizarre comments:
On taking a weightless flight with Zero Gravity Corporation Hawking said:
For a man who has relied so much on the help of other people to deal with his disability he certainly has an very low opinion of humanity. And if humanity is so rotten that they will destroy the Earth, won’t this same humanity just repeat that destruction in space? And which alien planet does Hawking want us to colonise? And how does one transport large numbers of people to this “New Earth”? Remembering how much fuel is required to lift just three men to the Moon.
Like Cosmologist Carl Sagan, Hawking seems to sometimes let his fantasies get in the way of facts.
Image of Steven Hawking courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Image of Apollo 11 courtesy of NASA.
