British Section of the World Federation of Doctors Who Respect Human Life

This could be great news aways down the road for diabetics. From the story:

An international team of researchers has finally managed to locate stem cells in the pancreas--in mice, at least.

If the findings are confirmed in humans, they could pave the way for dramatic new therapies for diabetes, namely the regeneration of beta cells so the body could once again produce its own insulin. Until now, scientists had all but abandoned hopes that the pancreas made its own stem cells because they had failed to find evidence to support the theory. But any clinical advances from the new research are still a long way off, experts cautioned.

Adult stem cells are ubiquitous. I am not a scientist, but from what I am reading, it may turn out that pluripotency will not be so important after all for clinical uses because ASCs exist in so many tissues.

David Burrowes MP has introduced a Bill to encourage umbilical cord blood to be donated at birth so that it can be stored for public use. Umbilical cord blood can be used for the treatment of diseases and for further research of new treatment methods using cord blood stem cells - providing an alternative to embryonic stem cell research. The Bill received its first reading and was ordered to be read a second time in October.

Links

• David Burrowes’ speech on Hansard

  http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200708/cmhansrd/cm080108/debtext/80108-0004.htm

Hundreds rallied outside the House of Lords yesterday to take a stand against the Bill. There was a great atmosphere as those present sang hymns, prayed and held placards reading: No Animal Human Hybrids; Protect The Embryo; Children Need Fathers; and, Protect The Family. Some wore cow and rabbit masks to demonstrate the absurdity of creating animal-human hybrids. A picture of protesters wearing masks and holding placards was featured in The Guardian on Wednesday.

http://www.ccfon.org/guardian.php

January 24, 2008

Volume 11, Number 6

By Maciej Golubiewski

(NEW YORK — C-FAM) A report just released by the European bishops calls on the European Union (EU) to focus on what they consider to be the real needs of families in Europe and further calls on the EU to respect national marriage laws of the member states. The report by the Commission of the European Bishops’ Conference (COMECE) entitled “Proposal for a Strategy of the European Union for the Support of Couples and Marriage” focuses on two fundamental problems that present “high emotional, social and financial costs to European society:” the continuing increase in divorce rates and the difficulty faced by young Europeans who decide to raise children.

The report says that in the field of matrimonial matters, “[national] diversity has to be respected and family law is and must remain the sole competence of member states.” The bishops found that some legislative proposals of the European Commission for increased cross-border legal cooperation come close to encroaching on the exclusive right of member states to make their own family policy. Moreover, EU policy in the areas of employment, social protection and poverty reduction ignore the importance of marriage altogether, they said.

In the area of employment and social protection, the bishops make the case that “loving and stable couples are a social capital for all Europeans” and are “founts of mutual trust in society” as well as “the preferable instance for bringing up children” and charge the EU with ignoring this. They call for EU assistance in sharing European best practices regarding divorce prevention programs such as communication training for high-risk couples, especially those dealing with pressures of dual employment and separation due to increased geographic mobility.

The bishops also took issue with the EU’s assumption that a dual-income family is “a new social norm” among European citizens, arguing that some dual earning households exist primarily for financial constraints. For that reason, they said, EU should support and not discriminate single-earner families. Staying at home to care for one’s children is “an important and welcome contribution to the well-being of all citizens of the European Union,” according to the report, which cites studies showing family break up as an important cause of poverty.

As for cross-border legal cooperation in family matters, the bishops warn that the EU’s legislative proposals exceed EU mandates by recognizing de facto unions and registered partnerships. This could prematurely “entail common recognition of such unions in a situation where member states do not provide recognition for the legal aspects of such unions” and dangerously undermine the importance of marriage as endowing parents with social and legal responsibilities which otherwise do not exist, they said.

David Fieldsend, from the Brussels-based CARE Europe, said, “The Bishops’ paper is a timely and well-researched contribution to the debate that is at last being aired at the EU on family matters. For too long talk of the family has been taboo while all sorts of fringe agendas were embraced with enthusiasm. Now the demographic crisis has forced the EU’s leaders to sit up and take notice.”

Sir, Not satisfied with their recently gained right to create human-animal hybrids, scientists and those who lobby on their behalf are now pushing for a system of presumed consent with respect to the use in cloning of previously obtained tissue (letters, Jan 21). This is an outrageous presumption that should not be permitted. Those who donated tissue for medical research, and naturally those from whom tissue was taken without consent, cannot have envisaged that it would be used to create human or animal-human embryos for destructive research, and might understandably have been repulsed at the prospect.

There is plenty of evidence that research using adult stem cells will realise true therapeutic benefits, possibly surpassing the potential of embryonic stem cells without posing any of the ethical dilemmas. How edifying it would be if scientists were to declare a respect for human life, from the time of its conception, as did their medical colleagues in the Declaration of Geneva in 1948.

Dr Paul King
School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Birkbeck, University of London

Sir, The memory of some scientists in this country is very short. The Alder Hey scandal involved the retention of organs from children without consent and the public was rightly outraged; the proposals by Lord Patel and others to bypass proper consent in order to use human tissue to create cloned human or animal-human embryos contravenes every protocol put in place post Alder Hey. Informed consent remains a fundamental pillar of medical ethics, one which the stem-cell imperative cannot overturn.

Josephine Quintavalle
Director, Comment on Reproductive Ethics

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority granted permission after a consultation showed the public were "at ease" with the idea.

Experts said it was vital for research into life-threatening diseases.

Two centres, King's College London and Newcastle University, will now be able to begin their work under one-year research licences.

BEIJING, Jan. 7 -- Officials in Hubei province have expelled 500 people from the Communist Party for violating China's "one-child" family planning policy, state media reports said Monday.

Of the 93,084 people who had more children than allowed last year, 1,678 were officials or party members, the New China News Agency reported. Among the violators were seven national or local legislators and political advisers, all of whom were stripped of their political status. Another 395 offenders lost their jobs.

China's family planning officials, worried about a baby boom that could further strain the country's resources, have been trying to crack down on parents who have more children than they are permitted under the law.

Under the current rules, city residents are limited to one child, while rural residents may have two children. In addition, parents who themselves are only children and members of ethnic minorities are granted exceptions.

Controversial family planning rules have helped lift millions out of poverty here but they also have exacerbated a gender imbalance, whereby 118 boys are now born for every 100 girls.

In recent years, a growing number of wealthy Chinese have defied the rules and simply paid the resultant fines. Now, government agencies are attempting to improve the enforcement of their policies without necessarily resorting to coercive means such as forced abortions -- a tactic used in the past.

Hubei province, which levied a record-breaking $105,000 fine against a local lawmaker last year, now bars violators from holding elective office or government jobs for three years.

"More party members, celebrities and well-off people are violating the policies in recent years, which has undermined social equality," said Yang Youwang, head of Hubei's family planning commission, according to the New China News Agency. A number of cases involving celebrities or officials were still under investigation, but they would be later identified, Yang said.

Wang Yukai, a professor with China's National School of Administration, said gradual changes to family planning policies would take years to complete. Those changes also would have to include a social security system for rural residents who make up most of China's 1.3 billion population.

"Family concepts in the countryside are old and traditional, such as having a son to carry on the family name. It will take a long time to change people's minds. Sons live with their parents and look after them, but daughters leave home when they marry," Wang said. "It will also take a long time to change the idea that men are superior to women, to enhance education, to modernize agriculture and to set up a social insurance system."

MADRID — Private clinics in Spain, which perform most of the country’s abortions, began a five-day strike on Tuesday to protest what they said was persecution by anti-abortion campaigners and government inspectors, who have swept clinics in recent weeks to crack down on illegal terminations.

The strike, which involves about 40 clinics, revives a debate about Spain’s abortion rules at an awkward moment for the Socialist government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, which is trying to avoid inflammatory issues before elections in March.

The strike could affect as many as 2,000 women, according to Francisca García Gallego, a regional director of the Association of Accredited Abortion Clinics, which organized it. She said striking clinics, which account for a majority of abortions in the country, would accept only emergency cases. The number of abortions in Spain has doubled in the past decade, to about 100,000 a year.

Spain decriminalized abortion in 1985, and under current law women can have an abortion during the first 22 weeks of pregnancy if there is a risk of fetal malformation and the first 12 weeks in cases of rape. However, they are allowed to abort at any point if they can demonstrate that their mental or physical health is at risk.

Ms. García said the central government had done nothing to protect abortion clinics or patients from a wave of aggressive protests by anti-abortion campaigners and raids by the local authorities that resulted in a dozen arrests in December. In recent weeks, clinics had been vandalized and doctors and nurses insulted and, in one or two cases, hit by protesters, she said.

The raids followed the arrest in December of Carlos Morín, a gynecologist who ran a group of clinics in Barcelona and who was secretly filmed by a Danish journalist apparently agreeing to her request for an abortion in her seventh month. Dr. Morín is in jail, according to local news reports.

Ms. García said by telephone that cases of illegal abortion were extremely rare and that 90 percent of terminations in Spain happened in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.

“There is a cloud of suspicion hanging over us ever since the Barcelona clinic was closed,” she said. “We feel physically threatened, but nobody in the government has come out in our defense.”

Dr. Morín’s arrest also set off a flurry of news media reports of “abortion tourism.” They offered macabre details of late-term abortions at clinics in Barcelona and Madrid. One private television producer released a video, said to have been made in a Madrid clinic, that showed an abortion at 21 weeks.

In December, prosecutors in the Netherlands said they had arrested a Dutch woman who was accused of having had a late-term abortion in a Spanish clinic. Dutch law allows abortions up to the 24th week and illegal abortions are virtually unknown, according to a report by the International Planned Parenthood Federation.

Abortion-rights advocates say the law should be more flexible, allowing women to terminate a pregnancy before a certain number of weeks on the basis of social or economic pressures, as is the case in many European countries. Critics say existing rules are routinely flouted by doctors.

Mr. Zapatero said after the Barcelona arrest that an overhaul of the abortion law would be part of the government’s election campaign, but almost immediately backtracked, saying simply that the law should be reassessed.

REGRET: “I hadn’t given it a thought,” Mark B. Morrow, shown with son Ross, said of long-ago girlfriends’ abortions. “ Now it all came crashing down on me — look what you’ve done.”

'We had abortions,' say men whose lovers ended pregnancies. It isn't just a women's trauma, they insist. But critics see a political calculation.

By Stephanie Simon, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
January 7, 2008

SAN FRANCISCO -- Jason Baier talks often to the little boy he calls Jamie. He imagines this boy -- his son -- with blond hair and green eyes, chubby cheeks, a sweet smile.

But he'll never know for sure.

His fiancee's sister told him about the abortion after it was over. Baier remembers that he cried. The next weeks and months go black. He knows he drank far too much. He and his fiancee fought until they broke up. "I hated the world," he said.

Baier, 36, still longs for the child who might have been, with an intensity that bewilders him: "How can I miss something I never even held?"

These days, he channels the grief into activism in a burgeoning movement of "post-abortive men." Abortion is usually portrayed as a woman's issue: her body, her choice, her relief or her regret. This new movement -- both political and deeply personal in nature -- contends that the pronoun is all wrong.

"We had abortions," said Mark B. Morrow, a Christian counselor. "I've had abortions."

Morrow spoke to more than 150 antiabortion activists gathered recently in San Francisco for what was billed as the first national conference on men and abortion. Participants -- mostly counselors and clergy -- heard two days of lectures on topics such as "Medicating the Pain of Lost Fatherhood" and "Forgiveness Therapy With Post-Abortion Men."

The most striking session featured the halting testimony of men whose partners aborted. Baier, who now lives in Phoenix, told the crowd he suffered years of depression and addiction. "I couldn't get the thought out of my head about what I had lost."

Since the concept of post-abortion syndrome first emerged in the early 1980s, some women have recounted similar stories -- and learned to leverage them into political power. They speak at legislative hearings and rallies organized by the Silent No More Awareness Campaign. They write affidavits detailing their years of emotional turmoil, which the Justice Foundation, a conservative advocacy group, submits to lawmakers and courts nationwide.

Last spring, the Supreme Court cited these accounts as one reason to ban the late-term procedure that opponents call "partial-birth" abortion. The majority opinion suggested that the ban would protect women from a decision they might later regret.

Women's testimony was also used to justify a sweeping abortion ban passed in 2006 in South Dakota. (Voters overturned the ban before it could take effect.)

"It's a rule of thumb that if you want to get a law passed, you have to tell anecdotes that grab people," said Dr. Nada Stotland, president-elect of the American Psychiatric Assn. Antiabortion activists have done that well, she said. "They've succeeded in convincing a lot of the American public" that abortion leaves women wounded.

Although the Doctors' Federation is based on Hippocratic ethics, not religious faith, we totally support the stand taken by the Lawyers' Christian Fellowship against the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill.

Below is their latest information.  Please come to their rally in Old Palace Yard at 2pm on 15th January 2008 if you can.

TIME TO STAND - HFE Bill Rally

Date: 8/Jan/2008

Date: 15th January 2008
Time: 2-3.30pm
Place: Old Palace Yard (opposite the House of Lords)

The House of Lords is meeting on 15th January for the first day of the Report stage of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill to vote on the proposed amendments to the Bill. This Bill strikes at the very heart of our civilisation and questions what it means to be human.

The issues the Lords will be voting on include:

- The creation of animal-human hybrid embryos
- Tissue typing to create ‘saviour siblings’
- The ‘need for a father’ consideration in IVF treatment

While the Lords are meeting on 15th January, we will be holding a rally outside the House of Lords in Old Palace Yard, SW1P 3JY at 2.00pm - 3.30pm, to take a stand to protect the family, the unborn child/the embryo and human dignity.

This rally will be the first in a series of rallies called ‘Time To Stand’. We hope to hold rallies on each of the days that important votes are taken on issues that strike at the heart of God’s purposes for our society, in the Lords or the Commons. It is important that as many people as possible attend Parliament for the rallies on the days when votes are being taken on these issues. We need to send the message that these issues cannot be swept under the carpet, and that the dignity of the human embryo, and the family are things that the public care deeply about and will have a massive future impact on the well being of the Nation.

Please put this date in your diary. It would be helpful for us to have an idea of numbers that are coming and we would be grateful if you would email Simone Lamont or call 020 7407 6157 if you would like to attend.

From The Times. Read the original here.

November 30, 2007

Thomas Catan in Madrid and David Rose

Police investigating four abortion clinics in Barcelona used frequently by British women have been horrified to find purpose-built machines attached to the drains that were used to crush foetuses.

The clinics allegedly performed illegal abortions on women into their eighth month of pregnancy. Police have arrested Carlos MorÍn, the Peruvian head of the clinics, his wife and four other colleagues after a lawsuit by a Christian organisation, e-Cristians. Mr MorÍn reportedly has refused to answer police questions.

Because they were so loud, the machines – which fed into public drains – were switched on only during the early hours of the day to avoid drawing attention to the illegal arrangement, police sources said. Officers gathering evidence at the clinics this week have been testing the machines and drains for traces of DNA, which may be matched with that of past clients, according to reports.

Press release from Comment on Reproductive Ethics.

(17 November, 2007)

‘The decision to give up on human cloning by the best known mammalian cloner in the world, Prof Ian Wilmut, is good news for us all and very good news for the integrity of science,’ said Josephine Quintavalle from Comment on Reproductive Ethics.

‘For years now the evidence has been mounting that cloning is a very difficult to achieve safely and successfully, and that the number of human eggs required is so high as to represent an insuperable hurdle in itself.

‘The work of Prof Yamanaka, developing patient-specific stem cells without the use of embryos, is the stream-lined way forward and it is great credit to the professionalism of Wilmut that he is able to acknowledge the benefits of this route forward. To be willing to change one’s mind in science is a sign of great integrity and real intelligence and we congratulate Prof Wilmut for his stance.

‘If full human cloning can be rejected on scientific grounds, what to make of some of the nonsense going before the House of Lords as we speak? A debate this Monday on the new Human Fertilisation & Embryology Bill will focus on all manner of interspecies embryos, created from animal and human tissue, and using the cloning processes. None of this research is necessary or desirable.

‘As a country we must follow the Wilmut lead and put behind us all meddling with human cloning and animal/human hybridisation. There are other ways to cure patients, and they are not only safer and simpler, but they are also ethically acceptable to us all.’

See: Daily Telegraph

Speaking on 21 November in the debate on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill [HL], Lord Ahmed made the following comments:

"My Lords, on the basis of my scientific qualifications, I am the least qualified Member of your Lordships’ House to speak in this debate. However, I speak with my religious, ethical and moral convictions.

"I begin by thanking all those who have written to me by either e-mail or letter. It would be impossible for me to reply to each member of the community, as on Monday it took six hours for my research assistant to open all the letters and e-mails and I am still receiving correspondence on this issue.

"I realise that the UK’s position as a world leader in reproductive technologies and research requires regulations. Therefore, I welcome the commitment to ensuring that all human embryos outside the body, whatever the process used in their creation, are subject to regulation. Reference has been made to designer babies, and I also welcome the ban on the selection of the sex of offspring for non-medical reasons. However, I remain deeply concerned with other aspects of the Bill and therefore will support amendments, such as those to the clause that will remove the reference to the need for a father.

"I remain deeply concerned at the notion of abortion as a form of contraception, although I accept the need for abortion to save a mother’s life where there is a medical complication. As we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, on Monday, abortion has, sadly, been used for many other reasons.

The following images are from the Christian Concern for our Nation website. They show the protest that took place in Parliament Square during the debate in the House of Lords on the HFE Bill. The protest was against the legalisation of animal-human hybrid embryos, and consisted of girls in bunny masks and boys in cow masks holding up signs reading "No animal human hybrids".

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill began its second reading debate in the House of Lords on MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19.

The bill allows for the creation of human/animal hybrid embryos by transferring human DNA to animal eggs, by fertilising animal eggs with human sperm and by adding animal genes to human embryos.

Pro-abortion MP’s want to add amendments to the bill which will make it legal to have an abortion without two doctors’ signatures, as at present, for nurses and midwives to perform abortions and for abortions to be carried out on unlicensed premises – but please note these amendments about abortion have not been added yet.

The battle over this bill is likely to be the biggest battle over life issues in 40 years.

It is vital to contact members of the House of Lords to ask them to vote against the bill. Point out your objections to the creation of hybrid embryos.

For names and e-mail addresses of members of the House of Lords, log on to www.spuc.org.uk/lobbying. click on Parliamentarians’ emails, then click on Peers.

From Lawyers Christian Fellowship:

Many of the speakers at the debate on 19th November spoke against Government plans to remove the requirement that IVF providers consider the need of a child for a father when considering IVF applications. Further controversy was sparked last night when it was reported that Gordon Brown would not allow Labour MPs to have a free vote on this issue of conscience. One Labour MP, Geraldine Smith, stated that she would deny any order to back the legislation, saying “Can you imagine a child who has a birth certificate with two females as mother and father? It’s nonsense. It’s madness. “The Conservative Party will allow a free vote on the issue.

It is now important to continue writing to the Prime Minister asking him to allow a free vote on this, and on the hybrid embryo issue in the Bill. Also please write to David Cameron commending him on his decision to allow a free vote on fathers, and asking him to take a public stand for the family in how he votes.

This letter was sent to the Observer but was not printed.

The letter from Baroness Gould et al. about Education and abortion (4th November) cites lower abortion figures from Belgium and Holland to justify liberal contraception and comprehensive sex education even in faith schools. However, abortion figures from these countries cannot be directly compared with U.K. figures. The reason for this, according to my Dutch colleagues is that very early abortions brought on by medical treatment, wich they call "over time treatment" are not included in the figures as this is not obligatory.

Robert P. Balfour, FRCOG
President, Doctors Who Respect Human Life