Analysis of Dangerous Elements Present in House Health Care Restructuring Bill - H.R. 3962

Analysis of Dangerous Elements Present in House Health Care Restructuring Bill - H.R. 3962

 

The House Bill contains important elements that would greatly impact the ability of patients to receive unrationed medical care. These elements, combined with inadequate funding – a scheme of “robbing Peter to pay Paul” wherein half of the funding comes from cuts in Medicare spending, would result in rationing life-saving treatment for senior citizens.

On November 7th, the House passed the “Affordable Healthcare for America Act,” (click here) by a vote of 220 -215. National Right to Life sent a letter on the night of the vote to members of the House prior to passage of the House Health Restructuring Bill. The full letter is available here . Now, with members of Congress back to work, Democratic leadership is considering bypassing a formal conference committee in resolving health care legislation differences between the House and Senate.

Limiting Senior Citizens’ Right to Use Their Own Money to Save Their Own Lives

The House bill would effectively allow federal bureaucrats at the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) to bar senior citizens from adding their own money, if they choose, to the government contribution in order to get private-fee-for-service Medicare Advantage (MA) plans less likely to ration life-saving treatment.

Medicare—the government program that provides health insurance to older people in the United States—faces grave fiscal problems as the baby boom generation ages. Medicare is financed by payroll taxes, which means that those now working are paying for the health care of those now retired. As the baby boom generation moves from middle into old age, the proportion of the retired population will increase, while the proportion of the working population will decrease. The consequence is that the amount of money available for each Medicare beneficiary, when adjusted for health care inflation, will shrink.

Three alternatives exist.

In theory, taxes could be increased dramatically to make up the shortfall – an unlikely and politically difficult proposition. The second alternative—to put it bluntly but accurately—is rationing. Less money available per senior citizen   would mean less treatment, including less of the treatments necessary to prevent death. For want of treatment, many people whose lives could have been saved by medical treatment would perish against their will. The third alternative is that, as the government contribution decreases, the shortfall could be made up by payments from older people themselves, so that their Medicare health insurance premium could voluntarily be financed partly by the government and partly from their own income and savings.

What most people do not realize is that, as a result of legislative changes in 1997 and 2003 undertaken at the instance of the National Right to Life Committee, this third alternative is now law. Under the title of “private fee-for-service plans,” there is an option in Medicare under which senior citizens can choose health insurance whose value is not limited by what the government may pay toward it. These plans can set premiums and reimbursement rates for providers without upward limits imposed by government regulation.

This means that such plans will not be forced to ration treatment, as long as senior citizens are free to choose to pay more for them. For more on the background of this program see here.

Dangerously, H.R. 3962 limits the right of seniors to spend their own money to save their own lives. Presently, the Medicare statute prevents the government from second-guessing or imposing limits on the premiums for private fee-for-service plans, allowing beneficiaries to balance cost, benefit, and affordability in making their own decisions whether to purchase such plans. Section 1175 amends that provision so as to empower the federal government to exclude from competing in Medicare Advantage those plans whose bids it does not like.

The consequence is to give the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) the discretion to deny older Americans the choice of plans whose premiums CMS deems too high. This amounts to the imposition of price controls, thus limiting what older Americans are permitted to spend for health insurance. Again, being prohibited from paying what may be needed to obtain unrationed health insurance amounts to government-imposed health care rationing.

In addition, Section 1165v effectively ends the ability of unions and employers to offer such plans nationwide – or on anything other than a local basis. Since a given company’s or industry’s retirees are likely to be spread around the country, this greatly undermines, if it does not effectively eliminate, the ability of unions and business to offer to their retirees plans that allow them to add their own money to the government Medicare contribution in order to reduce the prospect of being denied needed treatment.

Limiting Exchange Users’ Right to Use Their Own Money to Save Their Own Lives

There is a similar provision which allows an exchange to exclude “particular health insurance issuers ... based on a pattern or practice of excessive or unjustified premium increases.”vi

Originally, state-based "exchanges" were designed to allow comparison shopping among all insurance plans that provided the basic benefits. Under Section 104, however, exchanges would be authorized, in effect, to limit the value of the insurance policies that Americans using the exchanges may purchase.

Not only will the exchanges be allowed to exclude policies when government authorities do not agree with the premiums, but they will be able to look at any increases plans charge, outside the exchange – and remove those insurers from the exchange. This would create a “chilling effect,” deterring insurers who hope to be able to compete within the exchange from offering adequately funded plans even outside of it, limiting consumers’ access to adequate and unrationed health care.

When the government limits by law what can be charged for health insurance, it limits what people are allowed to pay for medical treatment. While everyone would prefer to pay less – or nothing – for health care (as for anything else), government price controls in fact prevent access to lifesaving medical treatment that costs more to supply than the price set by the government.

Under a scheme of premium price controls, health insurance companies will ration lifesaving medical treatment as they are squeezed more and more tightly each year by the declining “real” (that is, adjusted for health care inflation ) value of the premiums they take in. These day-to-day rationing decisions will have the most direct and visible impact on the lives – and deaths – of people with a poor “quality of life.”

For those eligible to participate in the insurance exchange, H.R. 3962 limits their right to spend their own money to save their own lives. Section 104 empowers the Commissioner of the Health Insurance Exchange to exclude from the exchange plans offered by health insurance issuers the Commissioner considers have “excessive or unjustified premium increases.” This essentially grants to one federal official the discretion to impose price controls on insurance premiums. While no one wants to pay more for anything, including health care, being prohibited from paying what may be needed to obtain unrationed health insurance amounts to government-imposed health care rationing.

Utilizing Comparative Effectiveness to Deny Coverage

There is language in the Reid bill that protects against discriminatory use of comparative effectiveness research on the basis of age, disability or terminal illness.vii However, this important language is not in the House version.

Consequently, provisions in H.R. 3962 could be used to establish standards that would result in the denial of lifesaving medical care based upon degree of disability, age, or “quality of life.” Section 2401 creates a “Center for Quality Improvement” which is to promote “best practices” in health care by doing four things: 1) identify existing best practices, 2) develop new ones, 3) evaluate both, and 4) implement them. It contains a provision that states the Center “shall not develop quality-adjusted life year measures or any other methodologies that can be used to deny benefits to a beneficiary against the beneficiary’s wishes on the basis of the beneficiary’s age, life expectancy, present or predicted disability, or expected quality of life.” (Emphasis added.)

As far as this goes, it provides a critically important protection against the widespread emphasis in the comparative effectiveness scholarly literature on the use of discriminatory criteria in standards of medical practice, an approach unapologetically employed in Great Britain by that nation’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE). For more on this see hereix. Unfortunately, this protection applies only to one of the Center’s four missions – the development of “best practices.” It leaves a gaping loophole with regard to the Center’s identification, evaluation, and implementation of existing “best practices.”

Anything like this anti-discriminatory protective language is missing entirely from Section 1401, which creates a Center for Comparative Effectiveness Research, and from Section 1159'sxi provisions commissioning the Institute of Medicine to develop new Medicare reimbursement standards to create incentives for “high value care” which will be implemented automatically unless vetoed by Congress.

Advance Care Planning

Advance care planning provisions could be used to “nudge” patients toward accepting denial of treatment as a means of cost control, and despite apparent prohibitions, could include assisted suicide. Section 240 requires health insurers participating in the exchange to provide beneficiaries with the option to establish advance directives and disseminate information about “end-of-life” planningxii, while Section 1233 reimburses Medicare providers for “advance care planning consultations” with senior citizens. While the National Right to Life Committee supports advance directives and indeed promotes its own version, the “Will to Live,” the author and blogger Lee Siegel, a strong advocate of universal health care coverage, points out an important danger in these provisions:

“For those of us who believe that the absence of universal health care is America’s burning shame, the spectacle of opposition to Obama’s health-care plan is Alice-in-Wonderland bewildering and also enraging but on one point the plan’s critics are absolutely correct. One of the key ideas under end-of-life care is morally revolting.  . . .

[Section 1233] . . . offers to pay once every five years for a voluntary, not mandatory, consultation with a doctor, who will not blatantly tell the patient how to end his or her life sooner, but will explain to the patient the set of options available at the end of life, including living wills, palliative care and hospice, life sustaining treatment, and all aspects of advance care planning, including, presumably, the decision to end one’s life.

The shading in of human particulars is what makes this so unsettling. A doctor guided by a panel of experts who have decided that some treatments are futile will, in subtle ways, advance that point of view. Cass Sunstein [who is the Obama Administration’s regulatory czar] calls this “nudging,” which he characterizes as using various types of reinforcement techniques to “nudge” people’s behavior in one direction or another. An elderly or sick person would be especially vulnerable to the sophisticated nudging of an authority figure like a doctor. Bad enough for such people who are lucky enough to be supported by family and friends. But what about the dying person who is all alone in the world and who has only the “consultant” to turn to and rely on? The heartlessness of such a scene is chilling.”

What gives weight to Siegel’s concerns is the focus by advocates on the money such “nudging” is expected to save. For example, Holly Prigerson of Boston’s Dana Farber Cancer Institute has been quoted as saying, “We refer to the end-of-life discussion as the multimillion-dollar conversation because it is associated with shifting costs away from expensive . . . care like being on a ventilator in an ICU, to less costly comfort care….”

Indeed, a medical journal article of which Priegerson was lead author concluded that the mean cost of care was 35.7% less for patients who reported having end-of-life discussions, compared with patients who did not.xvii A recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association similarly concluded, "[P]atients who reported having end-of-life discussions received less aggressive medical care and were more likely to receive hospice services for more than a week."

Myra Christopher, a friend of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, heads a major "bioethics" think tank - Center for Practical Bioethics - that has long pushed for advance directives. In an October speech, she left no doubt of the economic motive for promoting advance care consultations.

"The reality is that 9% to 11% of the entire health care budget is spent on end of life care – nearly 27 to 30% depending on whose data you want to believe of the Medicare budget is spent on end of life care," she said. "Conservatively, conservatively, $6.1 billion every year of Medicare is wasted on what we refer to as futile care . . . ." [emphasis added]

What is particularly disturbing about this “cost-savings” rationale for this provision of the bill is that it appears to follow President Obama’s call this past spring for “a very difficult democratic conversation” about “those toward the end of their lives [who] are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill out here.”

Funding Assisted Suicide

Moreover, these provisions could lead to federal facilitation of direct killing. While both sections state that they do not authorize “promotion” of “suicide” or “assisted suicide,” providing information about its availability in states where it is legal could well be described as not “promoting” it, only making patients aware of legal options – and while Section 240 states that it does not require health insurers participating in the exchange to inform beneficiaries about advance directives that include assisted suicide in states where it is legal, Section 1233 contains no such limitation on the “advance care planning consultations” with Medicare patients that it finances.

What is more, a section in the statutes of both Oregon and Washington State pertaining to what most people recognize as the legalization of assisted suicide explicitly provides that what these state laws authorize “shall not, for any purpose, constitute suicide, assisted suicide, mercy killing or homicide, under the law.” In light of this, it is troubling that the final drafters of Sections 240 and 1233 rejected the inclusion of a federal definition of “suicide” and “assisted suicide” based the existing federal Assisted Suicide Funding Restriction Act, opening the possibility that provision of information about the option of obtaining lethal prescriptions in these states would be construed not to constitute the excluded provision of information about “suicide” or “assisted suicide.”

Note:  Since its inception, the pro-life movement has been just as committed to protecting older people and people with disabilities from euthanasia as to protecting unborn children from abortion.  We have long recognized that denial of treatment, food and fluids necessary to sustain life against the will of the patient is a form of involuntary euthanasia, and thus have fought to protect the vulnerable from rationing of health care, whether by health care providers such as hospital ethics committees or by the government. For these reasons NRLC opposed the Clinton Health Care Rationing Plan of 1993-94, and has fought rationing in Medicare restructuring (click here), as well as today (click here). H.R. 3962 contains provisions that threaten these lives.

Click here for References.

Source: The Robert Powell Center for Medical Ethics
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UK Mother Overdoses Disabled Son: Why is Anyone Surprised?

UK Mother Overdoses Disabled Son: Why is Anyone Surprised?



Shades of the Traci Latimer murder from Canada, now a  mother in the UK has apparently overdosed her disabled son with pure heroin.  And this, after she was out on bail from a previous attempt!  From the story:

    Ten days after Thomas was admitted to hospital, [Frances] Inglis approached a neighbour and asked her for pure heroin “to end his misery”, the court heard. She later told police she had only said it in a “fit of anger.” Over the following months Thomas’ condition improved so that he could open his eyes and move his limbs. On September 4, Frances Inglis visited the hospital’s High Dependency Unit at 5pm and was left alone with her son. “A nurse later noticed that Thomas Inglis was a strange colour and wasn’t breathing,” said Miss Moore. Thomas was resusciatated but, according to medics, his progress was slowed by the incident.

She was let out on bail, and amazingly, tricked caregivers into allowing her to be alone with her son:

    She was charged with attempted murder but was released on bail on the condition she did not see her son. Staff at the nursing home where he was being held were issued with a photograph of her but Thomas was then moved to The Gardens Neurological Nursing Home in Sawbridgeworth, Herts for further treatment. Around lunchtime on November 21, 2008, a visitor signed in as Thomas’ aunt. Shortly afterwards, a nurse went to give Thomas his medication and found Inglis at the foot of his bed. Inglis ushered the nurse out of the room and shut the door, blocking it with an oxygen tank. When staff eventually forced their way in, Inglis allegedly screamed: “Leave him alone you stupid people. Don’t resuscitate him because I have done him already. He is in peace.” When police arrived she allegedly confessed to giving her son injections in his thigh and arms. A search of her home was said to have revealed provisions for what would happen once she was in custody including instructions for caring for the family dog and paying household bills.

The woman was clearly disturbed, but that said, I don’t understand why anyone would be surprised by this. A powerful meme has been loosed on the West that it is better to be dead than seriously disabled, a dangerous belief actively abetted by England’s head prosecutor when he essentially decriminalized assisted suicide of people with seriously disabling conditions by family and relatives.

Oh, you say, “But Thomas didn’t consent!”  True, but once the idea that killing is an acceptable answer to human suffering goes mainstream, it is a very small step from allowing assisted suicide to shrugging at the mercy killing  of those who can’t consent–for their “own good,” of course. Notice that this kind of thing happens all the time in the Netherlands, with the only difference is that doctors do the killing, and nothing serious is ever done about it.

It will be interesting to see what kind of punishment is meted out in this case. She might not get off easy. First, she badly embarrassed the authorities by allegedly doing the deed after they let her out.  On the other hand, he was profoundly disabled, and the murderers of such people, particularly family members, often receive generous mercy from the courts.  But this could be her downfall:

    Described by neighbours as a “pillar of the community”, she became a “permanently angry and changed woman” and refused to believe doctors who told her that her son would get better, a court heard.

The murder of people expected to improve is likely, alas, to be treated differently than the killing of someone who wasn’t.  The potential for improvement undercuts the power of the emotional narrative of ending pointless suffering out of love. I predict little leniency.  But it will be well worth watching.

Contact: Wesley J. Smith
Source: Secondhand Smoke
Publish Date: January 5, 2010
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Pro-Abort Decade Wish List: Repeal Hyde, Recruit More Abortionists

Pro-Abort Decade Wish List: Repeal Hyde, Recruit More Abortionists

Critic says, "People don't go to medical school with the explicit reason, 'I want to kill babies'

 

Forward-looking pro-abortion advocates hope soon to see abortion fueled nationwide with taxpayer money, explicit sex education implemented in every public school, and young medical students recruited to replenish an aging generation of abortionists, according to one columnist outlining a wish list for "the struggle for reproductive rights and justice" in the next ten years.  Pro-lifers responded with a very different ten-year scenario: a world without the legalized killing of unborn children.

RH Reality Check contributor Amanda Marcotte began her piece Tuesday by reflecting that, "after all, the past decade was a pretty bleak one."  "The pro-choice movement didn't advance the ball down the field, and even our defensive maneuvers didn't work so well at times," she wrote.

Top on the list was one well-known Holy Grail for the abortion industry: repealing the Hyde amendment, the provision on federal appropriations bills that bans taxpayer funds from going to abortion except in cases of rape, incest, or threat to the mother's life.  The amendment, which has stood since 1973, must be re-approved on an annual basis.

Pro-life analysts have widely speculated that Hyde may be especially vulnerable to pro-abortion lawmakers under the Obama administration, which has already taken active steps to undo restrictions on abortion in federal legislation.

Most recently, Congress passed an omnibus appropriations bill on December 17 that - per President Obama's urging - repealed a long-standing ban on taxpayer funding for abortion in the nation's capital. The move is expected to result in the deaths of thousands of more children by abortion, according to statistics on the effect of taxpayer funding availability on the abortion rate.

Marcotte called the Hyde amendment a "travesty of justice."  "We need to start taking action to pressure legislators to repeal the Hyde amendment, and create the public will to do so," she wrote.

The next goal on Marcotte's list was to "institute comprehensive sex education in all public schools."  "Abstinence-only is a zombie that keeps coming alive, and we keep valiantly fighting to kill it," she wrote.  "But getting rid of abstinence-only - with its retrograde attitudes towards gender, homophobia, and blatant lies - is not enough. We need to demand that our kids get real sex education that will help them make healthy choices while also respecting their autonomy and individuality."

Marcotte also hoped the next ten years would replenish the thinning ranks of abortionists.  Advocates on both sides of the debate have acknowledged in recent years that younger doctors have largely shunned the practice, causing the average age of abortionists nationwide to creep steadily upward as the forerunners begin to die off.

"The average age of an abortion provider in this country is soaring upwards, and many doctors who deserve to retire and spend their days playing golf stay in the business because there's so many women who need abortions and so few people to provide them," wrote Marcotte.

"We need to find a way to get people with the right attitudes and the right skills into the business," she continued.  "Programs encouraging bright, young pro-choice people into medical school to train as ob-gyns who perform abortions is a good start. ... Perhaps a scholarship program for medical students who train to be abortion providers, or a debt forgiveness program for those doctors that provide abortion? There are endless possibilities, and we should undertake them."

Commenting on Marcotte's abortionist complaint, Students for Life Executive Director Kristan Hawkins said the trend was revealing.  "People don't go to medical school with the explicit reason, 'I want to kill babies' - it's not something you aspire to be."

"There's a reason why people don't want to become abortionists, is because you're killing human life," she added.

When LifeSiteNews.com (LSN) asked pro-life leaders about their wish lists for the decade, the top answer was simple: "end abortion."

"In ten years, I'd like to see abortion ended by that point," said Hawkins.  "I want the Supreme Court to overturn Roe, and all the states to pass laws to protect the unborn ... let's just end this now, and we can move on to other issues."

In lieu of that, Hawkins called for the codifying of the Hyde amendment into permanent law, and ending state taxpayer funding of Medicaid abortions.

Contrary to Marcotte's take on preventative measures, pro-life blogger Jill Stanek put the increase of abstinence education on the top of her wish list, to snuff out abortion and illicit sexual behavior altogether.

In addition, Stanek told LSN, "My wish list would include a return to honest, objective scientific research" - noting the need for increased recognition of the abortion/breast cancer link and other physical harms to women from abortion, as well as honest exposure of such issues as embryo research and the dangers of hormonal contraceptives.

"My wish list would include a return to honest, objective journalism, so, for example, Planned Parenthood would be exposed as the evil organization it is," said Stanek.

On the political front, she hoped pro-abortion politicians would one day meet with defeat "because Americans decided abortion is so ghastly as not deserving of support, no matter what reason."

Contact: Kathleen Gilbert
Source: LifeSiteNews.com
Publish Date: January 5, 2010
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NEWS SHORTS FOR WEDNESDAY

NEWS SHORTS FOR WEDNESDAY
(Referral to Web sites not produced by The Illinois Federation for Right to Life is for informational purposes only and does not necessarily constitute an endorsement of the sites' content.)

Evangelicals: Abortion Tops Moral Issues List



Evangelicals have identified the greatest moral issues facing America today and topping the list is abortion. "The moral scandal of abortion tops my list...not because murder is worse than other moral evils, but because of the massive numbers of this killing field and intentionality of so many to put self-gratification, greed and political advantage above life itself," said Jeff Farmer of the Open Bible Churches in Des Moines, Iowa. Abortion, moral relativism and mistreatment of others almost came in a three-way tie as the top concerns among America's evangelical leaders, according to the survey released Monday by the National Association of Evangelicals.
Click here for the full article.


Scott Roeder Attorneys Subpoena Ex-Kan. AG Kline

Phill Kline subpoenaed to testify at Roeder trial



WICHITA -- Scott Roeder's defense said that it has subpoenaed former Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline to testify at the murder trial in the shooting of a Wichita abortion doctor. Public defender Mark Rudy said the defense wants Kline to testify about his four-year criminal investigation of George Tiller's late-term abortion practices.
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Pro-Life Advocates Plan to Protest Opening of Largest Abortion Clinic in U.S.



A coalition of pro-life advocates and religious leaders plan to gather in Houston on Jan. 18 to oppose what is expected to be the largest abortion clinic in the country.

Planned Parenthood is renovating a former bank, turning it into a 78,000 square foot facility that will include a surgical wing equipped to provide late-term abortions.
 
“It’s an abortion super center,” Lou Engle, founder of the pro-life group The Call to Conscience, which is organizing the rally, told CNSNews.com.
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Most voters favor abortion ban for federally subsidized health plans



Washington D.C. - A new national telephone survey reports that a majority of American voters favor a ban on abortion coverage in federally subsidized health insurance plans, with 39 percent saying they strongly favor it.

About 53 percent of American voters surveyed by Rasmussen Reports said that they support the ban. Another 40 percent said they were opposed, with 26 percent saying they were strongly opposed.

A slight majority of those who strongly support the proposed health care plan were opposed to the provision on abortion funding, while 65 percent of those who strongly oppose the overall plan favor the provision.

Thirteen percent of respondents said they wanted mandatory coverage of abortion.

Overall, about 39 percent of Americans surveyed by Rasmussen support the health care legislation.
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Kansas Lawmakers Plan Bills Restricting Late Abortion, Despite Lack Of Providers In State



Lawmakers in Kansas plan to propose new laws restricting abortion late in pregnancy, despite last year's killing of George Tiller, the only doctor in the state to perform such procedures, the AP/Lawrence Journal-World reports.

Abortion-rights opponents hope to pass a bill that would require providers who perform abortion late in pregnancy to report more information to the state. The bill also would allow patients or others who believe that a procedure violated state law to sue a provider. A similar bill (S.B. 218) was passed last year, but it was vetoed by then-Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D), who supports abortion rights and is now HHS secretary. State Rep. Lance Kinzer (R) said he will use that bill as a starting point for a debate. Abortion-rights opponents maintain that the state's existing abortion restrictions and reporting requirements are not properly enforced.
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States Warn Congress of Possible Lawsuit Over Nebraska’s ‘Cornhusker Kickback’



Thirteen state attorneys general have sent a letter to Congress threatening legal action against health care reform unless a provision in the Senate bill given to Nebraska is removed.
 
The provision is known as the “Cornhusker Kickback,” because it gives Nebraska a permanent exemption from paying for Medicaid expenses that would be required of all the other states. This means that taxpayers in other states would be paying for an increase in Nebraska’s Medicaid population. Medicaid is a federal-state health care program for the poor.
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Tim Tebow Pro-Life Superbowl Ad in the Works?

Tim Tebow Pro-Life Superbowl Ad in the Works?

 

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado - Rumors of a pro-life advertisement featuring the story of University of Florida quarterback Tim Tebow and angling for a Superbowl slot have surfaced following reports of a project in the works at the Evangelical organization Focus on the Family.

While as yet not publicly acknowledged, the Colorado Independent's Rich Tosches reported that the 30-second pro-life spot is expected by insiders at Focus on the Family to highlight the popular quarterback's mother’s refusal to abort Tebow, despite doctor’s advice to the contrary.

After taking drugs to battle amoebic dysentery during a trip to the Philippines in the 1980s, Pam Tebow refused the advice of physicians who suggested she abort Timothy because the drugs may have affected his development.  Pam eventually gave birth to a perfectly healthy baby boy.

Tim Tebow, who was homeschooled before becoming a college football star, now frequently draws attention for his outspoken devotion to traditional Christian values.  At the Allstate Sugar Bowl on New Year's day, Tebow's final collegiate game, the player continued a tradition of featuring a Bible passage on his eyeblack: this time, it was Ephesians 2:8-10.

Focus media relations director Gary Schneeberger on December 22 told the Independent, "I decline comment. Let's just say that. I have nothing to say,"

He added: "If there is a Super Bowl commercial from Focus on the Family, I guess you'll just have to wait and see it during the Super Bowl. I can say Tim Tebow does not appear in any Focus on the Family ad."  Tosches notes that Schneeberger did not mention Tebow's mother.

The ad would need to be approved by the National Football League and CBS, the network hosting the Superbowl game February 7.   Last year, NBC and the NFL chose to nix an advertisement sponsored by the Catholic watchdog group Fidelis, which hailed the success of President Obama despite the difficult circumstances of his early life and featured the message "Life: Imagine the Potential."

Contact: Kathleen Gilbert
Source: LifeSiteNews.com
Publish Date: January 4, 2010
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Pelosi: My Pro-Abortion Stance is Consistent with Catholic Faith

Pelosi: My Pro-Abortion Stance is Consistent with Catholic Faith

  

WASHINGTON, D.C. - In defending her pro-abortion views against the teachings of the Catholic Church in late December, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a professed Catholic, argued that restricting abortion amounts to a violation of women's free will and is inconsistent with her Catholic faith.

Pelosi told Newsweek's Eleanor Clift December 21 that she had "some concerns" about the Catholic Church's positions on abortion and homosexuality.

"I am a practicing Catholic, although they're probably not too happy about that. But it is my faith," said the Speaker.  "I practically mourn this difference of opinion because I feel what I was raised to believe is consistent with what I profess, and that is that we are all endowed with, a free will and a responsibility to answer for our actions. And that women should have that opportunity to exercise their free will."

Rep. Pelosi also discussed her interaction with Church hierarchy over the last-minute decision to include Hyde-amendment restrictions on federal abortion funding in the House's health care bill in early November.  After a group of conservative Democrats signaled that they would not support the bill without the abortion funding ban sponsored by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), Pelosi turned to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to negotiate adequate pro-life language.  Pelosi was ultimately forced to include the Stupak ban, which was rejected in the later Senate version.

Pelosi maintained that the bill's original abortion language, which segregated the government-appropriated monies funding abortion, would have kept the legislation "abortion neutral."

"I said to [one of the cardinals] that I believe that what we are doing honors the principles we talked about.... They said, 'We believe that it does not,'" she said.  "That's what the meeting was about — to make our case.  Clearly, the people at that table were not willing to accept what we know to be a fact."

Asked whether it was difficult for her to reconcile her faith with her public life, the Speaker responded: "You know, I had five children in six years. The day I brought my fifth baby home, that week my daughter turned 6. So I appreciate and value all that they want to talk about in terms of family and the rest."

She continued: "When I speak to my archbishop in San Francisco and his role is to try to change my mind on the subject, well then he is exercising his pastoral duty to me as one of his flock. When they call me on the phone here to talk about, or come to see me about an issue, that's a different story. Then they are advocates, and I am a public official, and I have a different responsibility."

Pelosi's bishop, San Francisco Archbishop George Niederauer, reportedly met quietly with her last February in what Pelosi's spokesman called a "cordial" exchange on the topic of abortion.  

Niederauer and 25 other U.S. bishops publicly corrected Pelosi in August after she indicated in a Meet the Press interview that historic Catholic Church teaching was unclear about the morality of abortion.

Contact: Kathleen Gilbert
Source: LifeSiteNews.com
Publish Date: January 4, 2010
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Sebelius: Senate health care plan will pay for abortions

Sebelius: Senate health care plan will pay for abortions



Washington D.C. - In a little-publicized interview given with the Feminist blog, “BlogHer.com,” Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius praised the language in the Senate version of the health care bill because it upholds publicly-funded abortion coverage.

In the interview with BlogHer’s Political Director Morra Aarons-Mele, Sebelius stated that the Senate bill takes “a big step forward from where the House left it with the Stupak amendment.”  Sebelius went on to note that she thinks it does “a good job making sure there are choices for women, making sure there are going to be some plan options, and making sure that, while public funds aren’t used, we are not isolating, discriminating against, or invading the privacy rights of women.”

Click here for the video of the interview.


According to Sebelius, Harry Reid’s version of the health care bill would establish “an accounting procedure,” but “everybody in the exchange would do the same thing, whether you’re male or female, whether you’re 75 or 25.” That procedure “would all set aside a portion of your premium that would go into a fund, and it would not be earmarked for anything, it would be a separate account that everyone in the exchange would pay.”

When Aarons-Mele observes during the interview that the explanation is “a bit confusing,” the HHS Secretary explains, “it is a bit confusing, but it’s really an accounting measure that would apply across the board..."

Source: CNA
Publish Date: January 4, 2010
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Pushing a Dangerous Anti-Human Exceptionalism "Undignified Bioethics"

Pushing a Dangerous Anti-Human Exceptionalism “Undignified Bioethics”



A bioethicist named Alasdair Cochrane, who is, ironically, a deep thinker at the Centre for the Study of Human Rights in the UK, argues against intrinsic human dignity as a basis for establishing bioethical policies.  He attacks various theories that promote human dignity, e.g., “as virtuous behavior,” Kantian dignity, and as species integrity.  But my concern is his denial  of human exceptionalism and denigration of the concept of “inherent moral worth.”  From his article “Undignified Bioethics” published in the journal Bioethics (link to abstract):

    The second important conception of dignity that we need to consider does not see dignity as a form of behaviour, but as a property. Under this conception, the possession of dignity by humans signifies that they have an inherent moral worth. In other words, because human beings possess dignity we cannot do what we like to them, but instead have direct moral obligations towards them. Indeed, this understanding of dignity is also usually considered to serve as the grounding for human rights. As Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: ‘All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.’

Do you now see the stakes in the debate over human exceptionalism? Cochrane hits the nail: If humans do not have intrinsic equal moral value, the philosophical bases of the U.S. Declaration of Independence (“We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal…”) and the UN Declaration of Human Rights, are rendered impotent, and universal human rights becomes impossible to sustain. Moreover, if we deny intrinsic human dignity, we open the door to using human beings as objects and mere natural resources.  Cochrane see this:

    This conception of dignity as inherent moral worth certainly seems coherent enough as an idea. Indeed, we can also see why this conception of dignity is employed in certain debates around bioethics. For if all individual human beings possess dignity, then they should not be viewed simply as resources that we can treat however we please. To take an example then, it may be that we could achieve rapid and significant progress in medical science if we were to conduct wide-ranging medical experiments on groups of human beings. However, because human beings have dignity, so it is argued, this means that they possess a particular quality that grounds certain moral obligations and rights.

Alas, that crucial matter doesn’t matter to him, because he would rather judge each individual’s characteristics rather than the inherent attributes of our species:

    If all human beings possess dignity–this extraordinary moral worth–we need some explanation of what it is about the species Homo sapiens that makes them so deserving. When we start looking at particular characteristics that might ground dignity – language-use, moral action, sociality, sentience, self-consciousness, and so on – we soon see that none of these qualities are in fact possessed by each and every human. We are therefore left wondering why all human beings actually do possess dignity.

Those individuals who happen to lack those attributes have either not developed them yet (embryos, fetuses, infants), or have illnesses or disabilities that impede their expression.  But those attributes are unique to the human species, they are uniquely part of our natures. That some have not developed, or have lost, them, is irrelevant–particularly given the stakes.  Indeed, judging the moral worth of individuals returns us to the pernicious thinking of eugenics and social Darwinism.

He claims, wrongly, that only Christian religion and its concept of the soul could justify human exceptionalism, which he denies as arbitrary and “controversial.” In place of human dignity, he argues a concept of “moral status:”

    Obviously, given controversies over abortion, stem cell research, genetic interventions, animal experimentation, euthanasia and so on, bioethics does need to engage in debates over which entities possess moral worth and why. But these are best conducted by using the notion of ‘moral status’ and arguing over the characteristics that warrant possession of it. Simply stipulating that all and only human beings possess this inherent moral worth because they have dignity is arbitrary and unhelpful.

Hardly arbitrary, given the consequences of rejecting it and the uniqueness of human beings as the known universe’s only moral species.  Unhelpful, perhaps–in that it would prevent fetal farming, killing for organs, using human being as lab rats, and other utilitarian horrors.  But if we want universal human rights as a primary goal of society, intrinsic dignity is absolutely essential. He concludes his essay:

    I urge for an undignified bioethics.

If we have an undignified bioethics, that is precisely the way we will treat the most vulnerable and defenseless among us.  In this sense, we can see how radically bioethics is straying from true liberalism based on the ideal of attaining universal human equality.

This is why bioethics matters.  As proposed by Cochrane, bioethicists could become court apologists for tyranny. As we have seen in history, such advocacy by the intelligentsia opens the door to the most vile evil of which  man is capable.

Contact: Wesley J. Smith
Source: Secondhand Smoke
Publish Date: January 5, 2010
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NEWS SHORTS FOR TUESDAY

NEWS SHORTS FOR TUESDAY
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Stupak, DeGette Warn Of Possible Defections Over Abortion Coverage In Health Reform Legislation



House Democrats on both sides of the abortion-rights debate have issued warnings of possible defections on the final health reform bill because of disputes about abortion language in the legislation, CQ Today reports. Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), who is leading antiabortion-rights efforts in the House, said he expects 10 to 12 other Democrats to vote against final health reform legislation if the Senate bill's (HR 3590) language regarding abortion coverage under federally subsidized insurance plans is included. Meanwhile, Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), co-chair of the Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus, said 42 House members have pledged to vote against any legislation that "goes against current law."
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Senators Call Healthcare Bill Unconstitutional



In a signal example of being a day late and a trillion dollars short, several key senators have recently admitted that healthcare “reform” is unconstitutional. That’s right. Just in time to do absolutely nothing about it, several lawmakers have decided to cop to the fact that nowhere in the Constitution they have sworn to uphold is Congress (or any other branch of government, for that matter) empowered to establish a new healthcare system, overhaul an old heathcare system, or do anything at all regarding the purchase of insurance for medical treatment.
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Woman Suing Over Unlawful Sterilization



An unemployed mother of nine children- ranging in age from 21 to 3 - is suing a hospital in Springfield, Massachusetts for sterilizing her without her consent. Tessa Savicki, 35, claims the hospital was merely supposed to implant an IUD (an intrauterine device, a reversible form of birth control) following the Dec. 19, 2006 birth of her youngest child, Manuel. Savicki's lawyer claims his client's rights were violated and that hospital protocol was breached. Savicki says she has suffered "mental anguish" after learning she would no longer be able to bear children: "There was no medical reason for them to do this," Savicki told the Herald. "That's my choice. This is my body. I wanted the IUD so later if I felt I wanted more children, I could have more."
Click here for the full article.


Senior GP Kills Grandchild By Sending Daughter to Spain for 'Illegal Late-Term Abortion'



A senior GP arranged an illegal late-term abortion for her teenage daughter in Spain, a hearing was told yesterday. Saroj Adlakha paid 3,200 Euros, now worth £2,800 ($4,508), for a clinic to terminate the 18-year-old's 31-week pregnancy, it is claimed. She then offered to help an undercover reporter do the same for a 29-week pregnancy. The limit for an abortion in Britain is 24 weeks. Adlakha is said to have been been turned away from the Calthorpe Clinic in Birmingham, where she used to work, because her daughter was 'in excess' of their own 20-week termination limit.
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Heidi Fleiss Has Murder In Her Heart - Fleiss' TV Abortion Comments Spark Outrage In U.K.



Former Hollywood Madam HEIDI FLEISS has sparked controversy in the U.K. by confessing she'd abort any accidental pregnancy during a candid chat on a reality TV show. The 44 year old revealed her motherhood nightmare to Stephen Baldwin and British actress Stephanie Beacham on Britain's Celebrity Big Brother. Asked if she had any children, Fleiss, who was once engaged to actor Tom Sizemore, revealed she was convinced she would be a bad mother - and is all in favour of killing children by abortion.
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Mexican States Adopt Abortion Restrictions In Response To Legalization Of Procedure In Mexico City



In response to a Mexican Supreme Court ruling in August 2008 upholding a Mexico City law permitting abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, 17 of 32 Mexican states have approved amendments to their constitutions declaring that life begins at conception and granting legal rights to fetuses, the Chicago Tribune reports. Veracruz, which in November 2009 became the most recent state to enact an antiabortion-rights amendment, has called on the federal government to consider adding a similar amendment to the national constitution.
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Morning-After Pill Popular In India



NEW DELHI - Young women in India increasingly use emergency contraceptives rather than condoms, gynecologists said. The use of morning-after pills rather than condoms increases the risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases, the health experts told The Washington Post in a story published Saturday. Advertisements for emergency contraceptives are widely advertised in India, where growing numbers of young adults are moving to large cities for jobs and leaving behind their families' traditional values, the Post reported.
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No Constitutional Right to Assisted Suicide in Montana-but Not Against Current Law

No Constitutional Right to Assisted Suicide in Montana–but Not Against Current Law



The Supreme Court of Montana vacated a trial judge’s ruling that the Constitution of Montana prohibited assisted suicide for the terminally ill–but construed the state’s living will law as permitting doctors to prescribe lethal overdoses if the patient self administers.  This is odd because that approach was barely addressed–a matter acknowledged by the court since the overwhelming focus was on the constitutional aspects of the case–and it would thus seem to me that a motion for reconsideration is in order so this approach can be more fully briefed. From the conclusion of the majority opinion:

In conclusion, we find nothing in Montana Supreme Court precedent or Montana statutes indicating that physician aid in dying is against public policy. The “against public policy” exception to consent has been interpreted by this Court as applicable to violent breaches of the public peace. Physician aid in dying does not satisfy that definition. We also find nothing in the plain language of Montana statutes indicating that physician aid in dying is against public policy. In physician aid in dying, the patient—not the physician—commits the final death-causing act by self-administering a lethal dose of medicine.

Furthermore, the Montana Rights of the Terminally Ill Act indicates legislative respect for a patient’s autonomous right to decide if and how he will receive medical treatment at the end of his life. The Terminally Ill Act explicitly shields physicians from liability for acting in accordance with a patient’s end-of-life wishes, even if the physician must actively pull the plug on a patient’s ventilator or withhold treatment that will keep him alive. There is no statutory indication that lesser end-of-life physician involvement, in which the patient himself commits the final act, is against public policy. We therefore hold that under § 45-2-211, MCA, a terminally ill patient’s consent to physician aid in dying constitutes a statutory defense to a charge of homicide against the aiding physician when no other consent exceptions apply.

Like I said: Very odd–particularly since in Vacco v. Quill, the United States Supreme Court ruled unanimously that there is relevant and legal distinction between removing unwanted life support and assisting suicide.

The good news is that it isn’t a constitutional right but permitted by the Court’s construction of a statute (despite that the authors of the legislation almost surely never intended advance directives to apply to assisted suicide).  And since the analogy is to withdrawing life support, it will be harder to expand the category of people to whom doctors can legally prescribe without running afoul of the homicide statutes.  Best of all, because it is statutory, the law can be changed or clarified.

The bad news is that the case seems to accept “aid in dying” as a legitimate medical procedure, and indeed one in which the physician is less involved in a patient’s death than when he or she withdraws life support.  But we are generally not talking about patients on life support.  Thus, this bizarre approach will now be attempted by Compassion and Choices in other states.

Let us hope this matter is reconsidered to allow full briefing on the point.  Absent that, let us hope that the Montana Legislature clarifies the law as not applying to prescribing lethal doses for suicide.

Contact: Wesley J. Smith
Source: Secondhand Smoke
Publish Date: December 31, 2009
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News Update: The Christmas Miracle

News Update: The Christmas Miracle



Doctors were stunned as a lifeless woman and newborn child both came back to life. Mom and baby are now back at home.

Click here for the video.


Dr. Stephanie Martin, director of maternal fetal medicine at Memorial Hospital, responded to a frantic, emergency "code blue," or patient requiring immediate resuscitation, and said that 30 to 45 seconds after she entered the room, Hermanstorfer's heart stopped beating.

"Unfortunately, in most of these situations, despite the best efforts of the team, Mom is not able to be revived," Martin told "Good Morning America."

Martin said it became clear that Hermanstorfer was not responding to any revival efforts after several minutes, so the team turned its focus to trying to save the baby by performing a Caesarean section without anesthetic. That's when doctors were hit with more bad news.

"When I delivered [the baby], he was limp, completely lifeless," Martin said.

Then something happened that Martin still has trouble explaining.

"As soon as I delivered the baby, the mother's heartbeat came back," Martin said. "Somewhere between four and five minutes she had been without heart rate and had stopped breathing a minute or two prior to her heart stopping."

Click here for more reported by Good Morning America. Another video can be found on this page.

Source: Pro-Life Blogs
Publish Date: December 30, 2009
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Planned Parenthood Doubles "Abortion Services" From 2007 to 2008 to Over 1 Million

Planned Parenthood Doubles "Abortion Services" From 2007 to 2008 to Over 1 Million

Expanding into "climate change” to increase support to fund abortion growth

  

NEW YORK - International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) recently released its annual performance report for 2008-2009. Despite an economic downturn and a slight decrease in annual income, the abortion industry giant boasts of increased activity across all of its lines of work, including condom distribution, advocacy and abortion services.

IPPF’s overall income for 2008 was US$119.7 million, down from over $120 million the previous year. While IPPF's total financial intake dipped, its abortion business boomed.  The organization provided almost 428,000 “abortion services” to young people alone, with a staggering 1,134,549 total number of such services – almost double the number from 2007 – across the globe.

Despite an increase in abortion services, IPPF remains unsatisfied with the figure, arguing that "in comparison to other types of services provided by IPPF Member Associations, these figures remain low and indicate that much needs to be done in terms of future investment in this area if IPPF is to meet its objectives of providing women with the choice and right to safe abortion when faced with an unwanted pregnancy."

In the report, IPPF boasts of promoting its abortion agenda among its member associations in traditionally pro-life countries. IPPF highlights its work in pro-life Ireland, which maintains strict limits on abortion access despite pressure from its EU partners and abortion advocacy groups such as IPPF.  IPPF boasts that through its member associations, it has been on the ground helping to provide support for rallies and debates to challenge Ireland's pro-life laws since "public debate is often dominated by religion."

IPPF also boasts of its successes in Spain, where abortion only had been permitted in cases of rape, fetal impairment or for the health of the mother. The IPPF report credits its Spanish Member Association for successfully campaigning in 2008 for an amendment to the abortion law to remove restrictions and legalize first trimester abortions on demand.

The report laments the "dramatic decrease in funding for family planning" from international donors and claims that the drop "represents a decline in donor interest rather than a decline in need." IPPF intends to focus its future work on securing sustainable funding for its activities by capitalizing on statements made by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on family planning funding, and on the Obama administration's repeal of the Mexico City policy so that funding to "international sexual and reproductive health organizations" will be restored.

IPPF views these developments as part of a "growing international interest" which "needs to be seized upon in order to drive forward the agenda for universal access to reproductive health."  IPPF will be focusing on using the "emerging momentum around maternal health to secure new support and financing" to fund abortion growth.

Beyond its traditional emphasis on abortion, contraception, family planning and advocacy, Executive Director Gill Greer indicates IPPF will expand into new areas such as “population dynamics” and “climate change” to garner increased funding.

Contact: Samantha Singson
Source: C-FAM.org on LifeSiteNews.com
Publish Date: January 2, 2010
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Prospects rosy for adult stem-cell treatments

Prospects rosy for adult stem-cell treatments

The past decade spelled success in research with adult stem cells.


 
The one area in stem-cell research where there have been no successful treatments is research on human embryos, which involves killing a tiny human being. Dr. David Prentice of the Family Research Council tells OneNewsNow there has been progress in a related field, that of induced pluripotent stem cells that can be developed by taking, for example, skin cells and adding a few genes and reprogramming the cell so it looks and acts like an embryonic stem cell.
 
But the real success, says Prentice, has been with adult stem cells.
 
"We've got stem cells in all of these tissues from the moment we're born," he explains. "They're in the umbilical cord blood that we cut off the newborn baby -- and these are the cells that actually can repair and replace damaged tissue."
 
Research on adult stem cells is already helping thousands of people, treating such things as spinal cord injury, heart damage, stroke, and juvenile diabetes. "And the list keeps growing," Prentice adds.
 
Almost 80 diseases and medical conditions are now treated with many success stories, so Dr. Prentice believes adult stem-cell research now and in future years will produce even more cures and treatments.

Contact: Charlie Butts
Source: OneNewsNow
Publish Date: January 4, 2009
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Pro-abortion congresswoman: Senate abortion language OK

Pro-abortion congresswoman: Senate abortion language OK
    


Washington D.C. - Catholic Congresswoman, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) hinted last week that she will support the abortion language of the health care Senate bill once it goes back to the House. The representative has been asked by the Democratic leadership in both the House and Senate to help find a compromise on abortion between the two chambers.

In an interview last week with the Huffington Post, the Catholic pro-abortion Democrat said she would support the Senate's version of the bill and its abortion-related language. She also asked the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) to join the “compromise” about which “no one is happy.”

Referring to the Hyde amendment, put in place in 1976 to bar federal funds from paying for abortion, DeLauro “acknowledged a certain misery in being forced to favorably champion existing law,” reported the Huffington Post. “‘Who on the pro-choice side is excited about saying the Hyde language ought to prevail?’ she asked.”

But according to DeLauro, “legislation, especially health care reform, is defined by finding middle ground.”

“It's maybe a compromise where no one is that happy. It would appear that you've got the Catholic Bishops who aren't happy. But [Sen. Ben] Nelson (D-Neb.) found his way there as did Senator Bob Casey (D-Penn.) and the pro-choice side said, ‘We don't like this as much as we would like to not deal with this language.’ But, you know, we're not going to defeat health care.”

With “regard to the Catholic Bishops, they now have an opportunity to not hold health care hostage in the way that they did and tried to do in the Senate,” DeLauro added.

Source: CNA
Publish Date: January 4, 2010
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Targeting Minority Embryos

Targeting Minority Embryos



Two recent papers–one published online by the New England Journal of Medicine and one just published in Nature Methods–analyzed the genetic ethnic diversity of some of the existing human embryonic stem cell (hESC) lines. One group examined 47 hESC lines, while another checked 42 hESC lines; there were 9 lines that both groups checked, for a total of 80 different lines investigated, including some of the most-used hESC lines and some of the few newly-approved hESC lines.

Not surprisingly, they found that most of the hESC lines represent a limited genetic ethnic diversity, primarily from European and Middle Eastern, as well as some East Asian, descent. The University of Michigan group seems to think this is surprising, but in truth it is not surprising and has been noted for years.

Why is this lack of genetic diversity not surprising? Thus far, the embryos destroyed for hESC lines are all taken from in vitro fertilization (IVF) clinics. As many have pointed out for years regarding the hESC lines, the IVF technique is expensive, so the sample is self-selected for those who can afford the IVF practice. The sample is further restricted to those parents who are willing to sacrifice their so-called “leftover” embryos to science. They also found that more than one cell line came from the same embryo donors; again, common sense would have indicated that given the selection, this would be the case.

Perhaps the Michigan group was simply naive regarding their expectations of wider genetic ethnic diversity in the hESC lines. The source of the embryos is sometimes actually given in the published hESC papers, e.g., Thomson’s original 1998 paper noted “IVF clinics at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and at the Rambam Medical Center”; and four of the five original lines did indeed come from Israeli embryos.

A 2003 publication discussing a potential American embryonic stem cell bank noted that

“The existing human embryonic stem cell lines will not be sufficient to allow for equitable biological access” and “Unless the problem of biological access is carefully addressed, an American stem cell bank may benefit white Americans to the relative exclusion of the rest of the population.”

Of course, their proposed solution at that time was to use SCNT cloning, or to recruit gamete donors so that embryos could be manufactured specifically for use in hESC harvesting.

Another group in 2005 noted the same problems:

“However, because of their rarity, the chance of researchers fortuitously obtaining the relevant homozygous hES-cell lines needed for such a bank from in vitro fertilisation clinics is very low”

and suggested the same solutions–cloning embryos or soliciting gamete donors for specific creation of embryos to derive the desired hESC lines.

And another group in 2006 stated that for good matching in a U.S. embryonic stem cell bank

“many thousands of hESC lines would need to be available” and “the current hESC lines were obtained from only a few localities and thus are unlikely to reflect the ethnic diversity of the U.S. population pool.”

Of course, it’s also not a surprise that the embryonic stem cell researchers want more embryos, especially minority embryos, from whom to wring their embryonic stem cells. It’s never enough with some of these people. Supposedly having at their disposal several hundred new hESC lines was satisfactory, plus the open-ended promise from President Obama of as many fertility-clinic embryos as they would like. But Michigan’s Sean Morrison

“will also make it a priority to derive new embryonic stem cell lines from underrepresented groups, including African-Americans.”

So, apparently Prof. Morrison is going to be stalking minority couples at IVF clinics, targeting their embryos for his lab. Or soliciting egg and sperm donors to create custom-made embryos specifically for the experiments. Or trying to make cloning work. All of this is legal in the U.S. But not all of this can garner federal taxpayer dollars. The next step, already propounded in a Detroit Free Press editorial (complete with the usual hype about “potential” embryonic stem cell medicine), is to do away with any federal limits on the use of taxpayer funds for human embryo research.

There are easier, better, and already-fundable routes, of course. One is creation of new iPS cell (induced pluripotent stem cell) lines, which can be created directly from virtually any tissue of any person. Morrison mentions this in passing in his paper, but Laurent et al. actually analyze several human iPS cell lines, and point out:

“In fact, given that hiPSCs can be generated from hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) isolated from human cord blood, existing cord blood banks could become a valuable source of ethnically diverse cells for reprogramming into hiPSCs.”

But a real way to address social justice in the stem cell realm would be to focus on making more adult stem cell treatments available to patients. Such as treatments for sickle cell anemia, including for adult sickle-cell patients, and treatments for multiple sclerosis, and spinal cord injury. Focus on the patients first.

Contact: David Prentice
Source: FRC Blog
Publish Date: December 31, 2009
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NEWS SHORTS FOR MONDAY

NEWS SHORTS FOR MONDAY
(Referral to Web sites not produced by The Illinois Federation for Right to LIfe is for informational purposes only and does not necessarily constitute an endorsement of the sites' content.)

New Aurora Clinic Cited in Illinois Abortion Jump



The number of abortions performed in Illinois reached a 10-year high in 2008, newly compiled state records show. The uptick could be due to the state's flagging economy and to the first full year of operation of a new clinic offering abortion services in Aurora, abortion-rights advocates and opponents alike say. In 2008, the most recent year for which data is available, figures from the Illinois Department of Public Health show that 47,717 abortions were performed statewide. That total represents a 5 percent increase from 2007. And it's the largest number of abortions in Illinois in a year since 1998, when 49,403 women were reported to have had abortions.
Click here for the full article.


Japan Has Fewer Babies but More Deaths



Japan's population decline accelerated in 2009, with the number of births falling 2% from the previous year. Preliminary health ministry statistics showed 22,000 fewer Japanese babies were born last year for a total of 1.069 million births. The decline follows a slight increase in 2008. Meanwhile, the number of deaths climbed for the ninth year in a row to 1.144 million - the highest figure since the government began recording this data in 1947. "The trend of increasing population decline is expected to continue in the future as the number of deaths increases due to the ageing of the population, while the number of women who are of childbearing age is decreasing," a ministry official said.
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Montana Court: State Law Allows Doctor-Assisted 'Murder'



HELENA, Mont. - The Montana Supreme Court said Thursday that nothing in state law prevents patients from seeking physician-assisted suicide, paving the way for the procedure. A year ago, a state District Court judge ruled that the state's constitutional rights to privacy and dignity protect the right of terminally ill Montanans to get the drugs needed to kill themselves. But the advocates have said a decision from the state Supreme Court was needed before physician-assisted suicide would be embraced by the medical community.
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Adult stem cells continue advances

Adult stem cells continue advances



WASHINGTON - Non-embryonic, or adult, stem cells continue to show remarkable results in treating injuries and diseases.

In recently reported therapies:

-- Doctors in Great Britain used a man's own stem cells and a new gel to heal his badly broken leg and prevent amputation.

-- Treatment with a young Australian man's own stem cells appears to have healed him of multiple sclerosis (MS).

Andrew Kent broke his right leg in five places earlier in the year in Britain, and three operations failed to bring healing, according to a Dec. 16 report by Sky News. Doctors told Kent he likely would lose his leg to amputation if they did not try the stem cell procedure.

Stem cells were taken from the bone marrow in Kent's hip, mixed with a collagen gel named Cartifill and applied in the fractures, Sky News reported. A metal cage was attached to his leg to squeeze the bones together carefully. The cage was removed in early December, six months after the method was attempted.

"This is an amazing technique," said orthopedic surgeon Anan Shetty, who removed stem cells from the bone marrow in Kent's hip for the procedure.

"He won't be able to run for about a year, but after 18 months his bones will have healed completely. I'm sure he'll be able to go back and rock climb again."

In Australia, Ben Leahy, 20, is walking after being in a wheelchair and having vision problems from MS earlier in 2009. At one point, he was in an intensive care unit with respiratory failure, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).

Leahy underwent a procedure involving stem cells extracted from his bone marrow. Doctors destroyed the immune cells in Leahy's body before injecting the stem cells.

"At the moment there's a good chance we may have arrested the disease," neurologist Colin Andrews said, ABC reported.

"He walks pretty well, there's only some mild weakness in his right leg and some visual loss in one eye and apart from that he's very intact," Andrews said.

Leahy's mother, Prue, said of his recovery, "What I got was more than I could have every imagined or hoped for."

Stem cells provide hope for producing cures for a variety of diseases because of their ability to develop into other cells and tissues. Most of the spotlight has been on embryonic stem cells -- mostly because of the controversy surrounding them -- although they have yet to produce any cures or therapies and apparently are years away, if not decades, from doing so. Critics of embryonic research argue that money would be better spent on adult stem cell research, which does not involve embryos. Another ethical alternative is induced pluripotent stem cell (iPS) research, a growing field whereby skin cells are reprogrammed into an embryonic-like state. "Dr. Oz" of Oprah fame told a nationwide TV audience he believes the "stem cell debate is dead" because of the promise of iPS research.

Contact: Tom Strode
Source: BP
Publish Date: December 28, 2009
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