RU-486, McCain and Embryos, Pope Benedict on Embryos and Cloning

Today is a busy day.

First up, RU-486, the abortion drug manufactured by a Chinese pharmaceutical company. The manufacturer also makes cancer drugs for leukemia patients in China. Yesterday, the New York Times reported that the plant that makes the cancer drugs, only about a mile or so away from the plant that manufactures RU-486, has been producing tainted drugs. Hundreds of cancer patients have been paralyzed as a result.

You can read the story in the New York Times here.

For several years, I served as one of two National Right to Life spokespersons on this issue. I was at the FDA hearing that approved the drug. I talked and worked with Randall K. O'Bannon, Ph.D. who is the director of education and research at NRLC and an expert on RU-486. What we know about the approval process and the manufacturer makes me less and less inclined to trust the FDA on just about everything else they say. And normally I am a very trusting person.

On John McCain: Pro-lifers and social conservatives appreciate his votes on pro-life issues in many areas. However, one of his big trouble spots has been embryo-destroying stem cell research. According to an interview conducted by LifeNews.com, pro-life Senator Sam Brownback (R-Ks) said that he has been lobbying Senator McCain and his campaign on this very issue hoping to help them understand the importance of the issue and why pro-lifers are so vehement in our opposition to embryo-destroying stem cell research. At a Florida campaign stop, Mr. McCain more fully explained his position on the research as well as how he arrived at his position. However, it is still not in line with pro-lifers. It is my hope that he and his campaign continue to speak with Senator Brownback and come to understand more fully why this is such an important issue. I hope Senator McCain's position on the issue evolves.

Last, but certainly by no means least, Pope Benedict used strong words to decry the destruction of human embryos for research purposes as well as the use of cloning to make new life. Pope Benedict spoke before the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The Pope called for a ban on human cloning.

Pope Benedict added,

"When human beings in the weakest and most defenseless stage of their existence are selected, abandoned, killed or used as pure 'biological matter', how can it be denied that they are no longer being treated as 'someone' but as 'something', thus placing the very concept of human dignity in doubt?"

Amen.

LifeNews.com Column from Today

My LifeNews.com column ran yesterday but anyone receiving LifeNews.com e-mails received it early today.

Here it is:

The January 11th Washington Post ran an article reporting on a new method of harvesting stem cells from embryos. Researchers at Advanced Cell Technologies (ACT) in Massachusetts claimed that their technique of removing only one stem cell from an eight-celled embryo should allow them to qualify for federal funds that have been designated for ethical stem cell research.

Their reasoning is that the majority of the embryos involved in the experiments survived after the single cells were harvested.

Well, let’s look at the facts.

First, federal funding is based on Hippocrates’ admonition to “do no harm.” While researchers used a technique that is often used in infertility treatments to test the health of embryos before implantation, the only way to know for certain if the embryos in the experiment were harmed would be to bring the embryos to term by implanting them in a woman’s womb.

That would be unethical and illegal.

Second, while studies have not been done on the survival rate of embryos in infertility clinics that have been biopsied, one study published in July showed that parents who have had the embryos biopsied before implantation have a 30 percent lower chance of giving birth. According the Post, one source noted that the studies that have been done have had flaws.

So no one knows for certain if the embryos would be okay or not but the researchers are asserting that because the technique is identical to that used in infertility clinics and a majority of those embryos survive to become full-term babies, they should receive federal funding.

Third, from a practical perspective, other researchers and scientists in the know described the technique of harvesting just one stem cell as very difficult.

Kathy Hudson, director of the Genetics and Public Policy Center at Johns Hopkins University commented to the Post, “Embryo biopsy is tricky and requires extraordinarily good hands and technical skills. And even in the best hands, embryos are sometimes lost.” Embryos that survived the biopsy were then allowed to grow for five days to assure researchers that the embryos were alive before they were frozen.

Mmmm -- the idea behind the federal policy is to “do no harm.”

Let’s see -- you take an embryo, remove one-eighth of it using a fallible technique, use an unregulated industry as a source for your claims, freeze the embryos indefinitely after verifying that the majority survived and continued to grow for five days (84 percent)—and you want to claim “no harm?”

I think these researchers are missing the point. Living human beings designated for research were experimented upon with the hope that they would survive and grow. Of course, after the experiments, the embryos couldn't be implanted (because they were designated for research) so they were frozen -- a kind of embryo limbo.

It’s an interesting way of defining the concept of “do no harm.”

Malcolm Muggeridge, the British journalist, once said, “Either life is always and in all circumstances sacred, or intrinsically of no account; it is inconceivable that it should be in some cases the one, and in some the other.”

President Bush promised Americans that federal funding would not be used to fund research that destroys or harms human embryos.

The results announced by ACT may, in a very narrow sense, abide by the letter of President Bush’s stem cell research funding policy. However, the research ignores the spirit of the policy and violates the principle behind it, which is that human life is sacred regardless of its stage of development.

Embryonic Stem Cell Research a "Gift from God"?

Leave it to Nancy Pelosi to make something so profoundly wrong into something profoundly wrong and sacrilegious. Calling science "a gift of God to all of us" and then in the same breath saying that science has given us embryonic stem cell research that is "biblical" in its power to cure, Nancy Pelosi really went over the top with her attempts at whitewashing.

And I'm not sure what she means by "biblical"-- does she mean miraculous? She must because it would be a miracle for embryonic stem cells to cure anyone at this point. No one is being treated with embryonic stem cells-- nil, zilcho-- no human trials at all.

All of the research we've been seeing about the successes in stem cell research are concerning stem cells retrieved from ethical sources such as umbilical cord blood or the patient's own stem cells. And yup, we have them in our own bodies-- one of the richest sources of stem cells? Right in your sniffer. That's right, way up in your nose is one of the richest sources of stem cells in your own body.

Next time we hear Pelosi or some other pro-abortion politician invoke God's blessing on the destruction of these little ones, be sure to duck-- the lightning is probably on its way.