David Prentice, Ph.D.“If you prick us, do we not bleed?” — William Shakespeare, Act III, Scene I, “The Merchant of Venice.”
Babies born extremely preterm, barely halfway through gestation, are living and thriving thanks not only to improvements in modern medical science but also to changing attitudes in the medical community.
The United States is the world leader in most areas of science and medicine, yet our current medical establishment is decades behind in its ineffective and immoral use of aborted fetal tissue for research. It is time for the federal government to stop funding this antiquated research, and for our leaders at the National Institutes of Health to stop using taxpayer dollars to propagate poor science and the gruesome trafficking of aborted baby body parts.
Like so many other pro-lifers, we are thrilled with the prospect of a new day on the United States Supreme Court. While we have been focusing intently on confirming Judge Brett Kavanaugh as associate justice of the Supreme Court, there is another battle we are waging in front of the Court.
The Pro Life Campaign has said today’s vote for abortion by the Oireachtas Committee on the Eighth Amendment is “a total betrayal of women and their unborn babies and represents a tragic drift backwards for society rather than a step forward. Anyone who tries to suggest that today’s vote is not for abortion on demand is telling a lie.”
When people talk about something that “saved their skin,” they usually mean that it helped them out of a difficult situation. But a young boy in Germany has literally had his skin—and his life—saved through the use of genetically-engineered adult stem cells.
Dr. Francis Collins has not shown any pro-life leadership at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). In fact, in an interview, Dr. Collins‘ response to a congressional letter outlining pro-life members’ concerns dripped with condescension, implying that the group of 41 congressmen understood neither the science nor the ethics of embryo and stem cell experiments. Dr. Collins owes us an apology. We know the science, use the scientifically accurate terms and know the ethical facts. Dr. Collins‘ positions at NIH have not been pro-life.
There continue to be reports of new attempts to create life, sometimes labeled “synthetic” or “artificial” because the entity is not created the old-fashioned way, i.e., by fertilization of an egg with a sperm. The most recent report involved combining two different types of stem cells to form an embryo-like structure that was labeled “artificial.” But is the manner in which a life begins the most important factor in how we regard that life? If a life is created using artificial or non-natural means, is that life really synthetic? Or rather, once a life is created, is that life like any other? The labels we put on things not only identify them but also give them value. So if we label a life as “artificial,” is this also a way to devalue that life?
Stem cells. Those words can conjure up many images for those who hear them: cures, death of young human beings, millions and billions of taxpayer dollars, lab-coated scientists, petri dishes, and patients with serious conditions—waiting, hoping, disappointed, or treated.
