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.
We are now just a little more than two weeks away from Christmas when Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus and reflected on the wonder of God taking on the form of a human being, especially starting as a newborn baby born under humble circumstances.
Stem cell therapies and their lifesaving results are arguably the best kept medical secret. Stem cells are currently being used in several thousand FDA-approved clinical trials, are treating tens of thousands of patients every year, and cumulatively over 1.5 million people have been treated to date. Yet these numbers, and the lifesaving results from stem cells for dozens of conditions, are unknown to most. Why the information blackout? Perhaps for lack of an adjective.
The U.K. press are reporting heartening results for the use of adult stem cells to treat relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (MS), including descriptions of “remarkable” improvements and “miraculous” results. Yet this is not hype; these are descriptions from some of the doctors themselves, who treated the patients, made detailed examinations of their progress, and scientifically validated the observations.
Genetically-manufactured babies, gene-manipulated human embryos, human-animal chimeras, human clones—all science fiction, right? No, these various types of laboratory-manufactured human embryos are already reality. Last spring, Chinese scientists announced they had experimented with genetic manipulation of human embryos, and scientists in the U.S. want to join in the experiments, also recently approved in law in the U.K.
Governor Jeff Colyer, M.D. and David Prentice, PH.D.
