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

Editorial

HFE Bill – Britain’s Shame

The contempt for human life shown by the British Government and many members of the House of Commons, some of whom did not even need to support the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill since they had a free vote, goes beyond the dreams of Dr. Mengele and the Nazi doctors hanged at Nuremberg. Some Peers, also, enthusiastically backed inhumanity in the name of Science. Human nature itself is to be tested to destruction. The list of techniques permitted by the Bill reads like something from an old-fashioned horror film . Along the way, MP’s opted to continue allowing abortion of disabled, unborn children up to the time of birth.

As the final vote on the Bill has been postponed to October, it is not yet known whether the proposal by Dr. Evan Harris, MP, to make consideration of the patient’s health unnecessary when recommending abortion, will be added to the new law.

The Annual Representative Meeting of the British Medical Association last July gives some grounds for hope. Dr. Philip Howard’s notable contribution in defence of the rights of conscience carried the day.

Dr. Peggy Norris, one of the founders of the Doctors’ Federation, who died on 8^th December 2007, spoke at a conference in Israel in 1994 on the subject “Hitler or Hippocrates?” It is the Hippocratic conscience which needs to be safeguarded, not for the sake of religious practitioners but for the sake of the patients.

1. Designer loopholes?

“A loophole in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill could permit some reproductive cloning without the need for fresh primary legislation, the Government has admitted” (The Times, June 14^th 2008).

“The problem has arisen because of clauses that regulate a new approach to preventing diseases caused by faulty mitochondria - cellular batteries that provide energy. The flaw in the legislation, first highlighted by a small pressure group called ‘Human Genetics Alert’ is that not all mitochondrial diseases are caused by defects in mitochondrial DNA. Some are caused by defects in the nucleus.”

“A spokesman for the Department of Health said ‘This power can only be used to permit the practice of curing an embryo or an egg of a serious mitochondrial disease. The Government will not use this power to permit the practice of reproductive cloning.’”

2. O King, live for ever

“Why are we so against the idea of cloned human babies?” asked Mr. Hugh McLachlan in New Scientist, 18 July 2008. “As a bioethicist specialising in reproductive issues, I believe it has more to do with an irrational fear of cloning than any logical reason. If anything, clones would be less alike than twins because they would be different ages and brought up in different contexts.”

Some powerful millionaire, perhaps, would like to perpetuate himself this way?

3. Exploitation of Vulnerable Groups

“The [HFE] Bill permits the manufacturing of children to use them to treat another person – so called ‘saviour siblings’ – turning children into commodities. It opens the way for wider use of an embryo screening technique called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) in which some cells of an embryo created by IVF are removed and tested for particular genetic traits, such as muscular dystrophy. Since only an embryo which is free from any defect will be implanted, using PGD inevitably leads to most being destroyed. (Christian Institute briefing, April 2008)

‘Saviour Siblings’ will be permitted for the treatment of ‘serious medical conditions’, a concept not defined in the Bill. The Bill prevents a saviour sibling being created with the express intention of obtaining ‘whole organs’ but this will have little effect.”

“A significant chunk of liver” was referred to in the House of Commons committee on the Bill on 19^th May 2008.

4. Amendment 102

“The Government have brought in and passed a major amendment which in our opinion should have been a conscience issue on which a free vote of the whole House should have been allowed rather than having been subject to approval by this relatively small Committee”,

The Lawyers Christian Fellowship commented on 18^th June 2008.

“The major amendment (number 102) which was approved on 5^th June will mean that three groups of individuals could have their human cells used to create cloned embryos of themselves or animal-human hybrids (human admixed embryos) for scientific research purposes without their explicit consent.

“Two of the most vulnerable groups in society are to be exploited here: children and persons who lack capacity (such as the mentally ill), who themselves suffer from serious physical or mental disability, or serious illness. The research will create embryos as ‘human admixed embryos’ in order to research that child’s or mentally ill person’s particular serious illness, but scientists can also use their ‘human cells’ to research similar non-serious conditions. The substitute consent of a parent or carer will be taken as sufficient.

“The third group whose human cells may be used without consent to create embryos or human admixed embryos for research purposes, are those who have donated their cells for research before human – animal hybrids were even thought of.”

5. Cloning without consent

Research on those who cannot give valid consent is allowed under The Mental Capacity Act if it is not “intrusive”.

The following letter appeared in The Times: 23 January 2008.

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.

6. “Those who replace us”

“John Harris is an influential UK bioethicist whose hard core utilitarianism makes his ideas dangerous and potentially as tyrannical as those of Peter Singer – perhaps more”, Wesley Smith reported on 17 May 08. He believes that couples who choose to have babies even when there are problems are misguided. Today, The Times of London has a Harris piece.

“Darwinian evolution has taken millions of years to create human beings; the next phase of evolution, a phase I call ‘enhancement evolution,’ could occur before the end of the century. The result may be the emergence of a new species that will initially live alongside us and eventually may entirely replace humankind…

“Some of these possibilities are so radical that the creatures benefiting from them would no longer be “human” in the way we think of it. The end of humanity is not in itself a concern; making sure that those who replace us are better than we are is a huge and timely concern.”

“And we can kiss universal human rights goodbye”, Wesley Smith concludes.

7. No Genetic Parents – unpublished in The Guardian

Sir, Your headline “Human embryos created to fight inherited disease” (6 June might just as easily have read “Human clones created from destroyed IVF embryos”. Any clone eventually born (that is, after all, the ultimate aim of the Newcastle team) will have to come to terms with the fact that he or she is not only the clone of an embryo destroyed for the purpose, but is partly composed from a second dead embryo, used as a “shell” for the first embryo’s nuclear DNA. It is this second embryo, not his or her mother who is the “donor” providing mitochondrial DNA for the third embryo produced. The cloned offspring will have no genetic parents. Instead, he or she will have two donors of genetic material who literally died to produce him or her. Do we really think the clone will not object?

(Dr) Helen Watt

Director – Linacre Centre for Healthcare Ethics

6 June 08

8. Scientists from round the world protest

Scientists and Christians actively involved in stem cell research and regenerative medicine from Munich, Piedmont, Bristol, Detroit, Queensland, Melbourne, Leeds, Dusseldorf, Cambridge, Utah, Kiel, Jerusalem and Lisbon wrote in a joint letter to The Times on 16^th May 08:-

“There is no demonstrable scientific or medical case for insisting on creating without any clear scientific precedent, a wide spectrum of human-non-human hybrid entities or ‘human admixed embryos’ – We therefore question the scientific validity of proposals to create such embryonic combinations currently before the U.K. Parliament”.

Britain risks becoming a ‘rogue state’ in fact, as has been noted in Parliament.

9. Poll shows public rejects Embryo Bill

“An opinion poll has revealed that the British public is overwhelmingly opposed to Gordon Brown’s controversial proposed embryology laws” Catholic Herald, 4 April 08).

“The poll, conducted by Com Res, a member of the British Polling Council, on behalf of The Christian Institute found that 79 % of people think it is important to consider a child’s need for a father in IVF.

“A total of 60% think it is wrong to create animal-human embryos with only 33% taking the view that it is not wrong. 51% of the 1,004 British adults polled also agree that the creation of ‘saviour siblings’ denies the child a choice in how its body is used”.

10. Waste Embryos

A Parliamentary question from Lord Alton of Liverpool recently elicited the fact that “over one million human embryonic children were killed in the U.K. in the past 14 years as ‘waste’ embryos from in vitro fertilisation processes” (Pro-Life Care: July 2008).

“The acquired data showed that 2,137,924 embryonic humans were created using IVF between 1991 and 2005 but about 1.2million were never used. “ Those not considered strong enough for implantation were discarded and the rest frozen to be killed after ten years.

11. “Three times better than IVF”

“ A research paper about Napro Technology Infertility Treatment has been accepted for publication by the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine” (Central London Fertility Care News in its Summer 2008 issue.)

“The paper is entitled ‘Outcomes from Treatment of Infertility with Natural Procreative Technology in an Irish General Practice’ and is due out around October 2008. The journal article illustrates how this logical, methodical approach provides three times the success rates of IVF in the treatment of infertility, while also being less invasive, less expensive and ethically sound.”

12. G M embryos for research

“The HFE Bill will allow the creation of G M human embryos for research – that is to say, embryos whose make-up has been genetically altered” (Image News, July 2008).

“A genetically modified human embryo was created by American scientists last year. News of it only leaked out when it was mentioned in a report by the UK’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority. Now British scientists may be doing the same thing.

Said Dr David King of Human Genetics Alert: ‘This is the first step on the road that will lead to the nightmare of designer babies and a new eugenics. I have been speaking to MP’s all week and no one knows that the Government is legalising G M embryos. The public has had enough of scientists sneaking these things through and then presenting them with a fait accompli’.”

“American bioethicist Wesley J Smith says scientists are ready to produce G M human embryos. There is, he said, “a cadre of bioethicists and lawyers already laying down the intellectual foundation to create a constitutional right to it”.

13. It Pays to be a Eugenicist,

by Wesley Smith

“Big Money is out there for the brightest minds to shove utilitarianism and the goal of human enhancement down our throats. Australian Professor Julian Savulescu (now in the UK) – who I have seen debate and believe me he is one scary cat – has just picked up an 800 thousand pound grant to begin a eugenics, or neuroethics, center at Oxford. From Bioedge’s report:-

Professor Savulescu said: Neuroscience studies the brain and mind, and thereby some of the most profound aspects of human existence. In the last decade, advances in imaging and manipulating the brain have raised ethical challenges, particularly about the moral limits of the use of such technology, leading to the new discipline of neuroethics.

Professor Savulescu has become notorious for arguing that we should genetically enhance the human species by improving IQ, behaviour, mood, character and morality. Biological manipulation to increase opportunity is ethical, he once said. If we have an obligation to treat and prevent disease, we have an obligation to try to manipulate these characteristics to give an individual the best opportunity of the best life. He has even argued that parents have a moral responsibility to select the best children they could have. It will be interesting to see what sort of ideas about brain manipulation will emerge from the well-funded new centre.

“So, they make up a new field whole cloth dedicated to destroying universal human equality and the intrinsic worth of merely being human and the money comes pouring in. And with the money and the prestigious academic affiliation comes awesome power to influence young and bright minds who are society’s leaders of tomorrow. And, being very bright, they see which way the financial winds are blowing and what they need to believe – or say they believe in order to climb the ladder of success.

“What chance do you think there would be for someone as bright as Savulescu, and with the same credentials, to receive such major funding and Oxford offices if he held opposite views? Good luck with that and don’t call us, we’ll call you.”

14. “Feeding the Lions to the Christians”

Sarah Palin and John McCain are depicted throwing two lions – the Media and the Liberals – to a clamorous crowd of Christians, in a delightful cartoon from the USA, sent on by Wesley Smith.

Before Governor Palin, who welcomed her own Down’s baby, was chosen as Senator McCain’s running mate in the presidential election, Family and Life (Dublin) noted that in Alaska she had promoted state parental consent laws and legislation to outlaw partial-birth abortion.

15. Survey reveals women need real choice

“The right to choose means no choice at all – that is what half of women who have had abortions have told researchers”, a press release from the group “Real Choice” reported on a survey carried out in Britain by Comres (May 6^th, 2008).

“Startling results have been revealed by one of the first surveys of the views and attitudes of a sample of UK women who have actually experienced abortion. One of the most compelling statistics showed 51% felt they had no other choice but to have a abortion.

“The survey revealed that in the months after the abortion 48% felt a sense of regret. 40% wish their decision to have an abortion could have been different and 46% still think about it now”. Financial concerns were one of the key factors (for 74%). Relationships with the baby’s father was cited as a reason for abortion by 72%.”

www.realchoice.net/survey-2008.htm.

16. Forced abortions attempted with pills from Internet

“Two men have been sentenced to jail terms for attempting to force abortions of their children by buying abortifacients through the internet and hiding it in the woman’s food”, NRL News reported in March 2008.

“A Swedish man will spend 8 months in prison for aggravated assault, according to the Associated Press (A.P.), while in Britain a man was sentenced to over three years for ‘administering a poison, with intent to procure a miscarriage’, the Daily Mail reported. The Bristol baby survived though born two months early. His father was advised to confess to what he had done after consulting a psychiatrist. “You cannot imagine how wonderful it feels to hold my son,” said the baby’s mother, according to the Mirror.

17. BMA Annual Representative Meeting 2008

In the medical ethics section of the ARM in Edinburgh there was a 35 minute debate on Dr Evan Harris MP’s Motion 528, which sought to limit a doctor’s right to conscientious objection solely to those procedures currently protected by law – abortion (in the 1967 Act) and IVF (in the 1990 Act). The Christian Medical Fellowship reports on its website that “In a late amendment, the withholding and withdrawing of treatments from the mentally incapacitated was included -”

“Andrew Dearden of BMA Council who had planned to speak ‘for’ the motion announced that after hearing the speeches by David Randall and Philip Howard, he had changed his mind. With the Chairman’s encouragement, he spoke ‘against’. Fred Wright of Oxford division, called next to speak ‘for’, announced to applause that he was only there in case Evan Harris could not attend to propose the motion, and that he could not have done that with a clear conscience as he too was against it!

“Preventing consultation when the doctor recognises that she/he is not in a position to give balanced advice to patients, considering that procedure and does not claim to do so” was lost by 25% to 75% and when the medical practice makes every effort to inform patients in advance, for example through practice leaflets, which doctors are able to provide such advice and make appropriate referrals was narrowly lost by 49.5 – 50.6%. Doctors felt ‘insulted’ by the suggestion that they could not give fair counselling and advice whatever their own personal views, and feared that some doctors might be ‘targeted’ as a consequence of statements in practice leaflets.”

Note: Dr Harris was voted off the BMA’s Medical Ethics Committee the following month.

18. Counselling and support for women

“There was more good news when Motion 545, recommended for approval, was passed on a show of hands as the medical ethics section over-ran its time.

It acknowledged that abortion can be a psychologically traumatic process for women and urged the BMA to campaign for increased counselling and support for women before and after this procedure.”

19. Artist hanged herself

“An artist hanged herself after aborting her twins when she was eight weeks pregnant, leaving a note saying ‘I should never have had an abortion. I see now I would have been a good mum,” the Daily Telegraph reported on 22^nd February 08. “Emma Beck was found hanging at her home in Helston, Cornwall, on 1 February 07. She was declared dead early the following day – her 31^st birthday.

“Her suicide note read ‘I told everyone I didn’t want to do it, even at the hospital I was frightened, now it is too late. I died when my babies died. I want to be with my babies: they need me, no-one else does.”

The inquest at Truro City Hall heard that Miss Beck had split up with her boyfriend after he “reacted badly” to the pregnancy.

20. “Eliminate Disabled Unborn” – Peers

During debates on the HFE Bill in the House of Lords, Baronesses Meacher and Tonge supported the existing law, which allows abortion up to birth for unborns with disability.

Liz Sayce, Chief Executive of RADAR, Britain’s largest disability network, criticised the pair (Catholic Herald 5 Feb 08). She said: “Assumptions that another person’s life is not worth living because of their disability are something we had hoped were confined to the past. People’s lives are far more limited by the expectations of society than they are by their impairments and it is not for the medical profession or baronesses to judge whose lives are worth living and whose are not.”

Peers disagreed: the existing law was upheld by 59 votes to 22. (It is also supported by Mr David Cameron).

21. Biggest easing of abortion laws in 40 years proposed.

“The most significant relaxation of the abortion laws since the practice was first made legal 40 years ago is being proposed by a cross-party group of MP’s”.

(Daily Telegraph 8 July 08)

Doctors have written to their MP’s about these proposed amendments to the HFE Bill put down by Dr Evan Harris MP and two others. One amendment would allow nurses and midwives to perform abortions. The other involves the removal of the physical and mental health grounds declaration currently in the law. If this were passed, doctors who gave proper warning of the health risks of abortion to patients requesting it could be accused of causing delay and thereby suffering to the woman.

Now that the health risk scan no longer be denied, pro-abortion politicians seem to be getting desperate.

22. Backstreet abortion myth exploded

During the debate on the HFE Bill in the House of Commons on 20^th May 08 Ann Widdecombe MP reported the interesting fact: “In the 10 years before the passing of the 1967 Act – these are Government figures, not mine – the number of abortions carried out in the backstreets that resulted in injury or adminssion to hospital declined at the same rate as it did in the 10 years following the Act. In other words, the 1967 Act was not a panacea that cured backstreet abortions, which were already declining because of greater education and health advice”.

23. “Abortion Bill will cost Brown the Catholic Vote”

“Labour was warned yesterday that it could no longer rely on Catholic support in a make-or-break by-election because of the recent abortion vote,” The Daily Telegraph reported on 14 July 08. “Bishop Joseph Devine, the second most senior figure in the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland, said the Prime Minister had lost the electorate’s trust over the controversial Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, and appeared to have a “death wish”.

“The Church is furious that, during the Bill’s passage through the Commons Labour MP’s rejected a proposal to lower the time limit for abortions from 24 to 20 weeks. It is also bitterly opposed to research on human-animal hybrid embryos, which was also contained in the Bill”.

When the former Labour stronghold of Glasgow East fell to the Scottish Nationalist Party, the London Evening Standard reported (25 July 08) “Blame for the disaster was being put on lingering resentment over the 10p tax fiasco and anger at higher food and fuel prices. Controversial measures in the recent Embryology Bill may also have influenced the large number of Catholics in the area.”

24. “Let’s tell Europe where to get off on abortion issue”

“There are times when the only proper response is a deep sigh”: wrote David Quinn in the Irish Independent on 21 March 08. “One such moment occurred this week when news broke that a body of the Council of Europe has told Ireland to decriminalise abortion.

“The Council of Europe is not the only international organisation attempting to force Ireland into line with the international Liberal/left conscience on human rights – the European Commission has accused Ireland of being in breach of an EU equality directive on multiple grounds,” criticising faith based schools and hospitals which attempt to protect their ethics.

“Needless to say this is hardly a good ad for the Lisbon Treaty. If the EU is already abusing the powers it has, who in their right mind would want to give it more powers?”

Perhaps the Council of Europe should have waited until after the Irish referendum before issuing orders.

25. Abortion and breast cancer

“The rising rate of abortions will lead to a sharp increase in breast cancer cases, says a study” (Daily Mail 8 Oct 07).

“A report in a respected American journal predicts a dramatic rise in breast cancer among those who have had abortions before giving birth to their first child.

Cases in England and Wales will soar from 39,229 a year in 2004 to 65,252 in 2025, it says, with rising abortion rates a major reason”.

www.jpands.org/vol12no3/carroll.pdf

A booklet (ISBN 0-9514532-2-X) by Patrick Carroll, “Assessing the Damage: The demographic impact on society and consequences for the health of women of the 1967 Abortion Act over 40 years” published by Papri and The Medical EducationTrust is available from the trust, PO Box 17317 London SW3 4WJ.

26. Effects of Public Policy

Angela Lanfranchi MD, FACS Clinical Assistant Professor of Surgery at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey USA, was quoted in September in Endeavour Forum’s Newsletter:

“In 2007, actuary Patrick Carroll published his study, The Breast Cancer Epidemic: Modeling and Forecast Based on Abortion and other Risk Factors” in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons. He used computerised abortion and breast cancer registries and found the greatest predictor of future breast cancer incidence was a nation’s abortion rates.

“In the United Kingdom, those countries which have the highest abortion rates also have the highest breast cancer rates. In England where abortion rates are highest, the incidence of breast cancer is 116 per 100,000 while in Ireland where abortion is rare, the incidence is 97 per 100,000. Scotland is between England and Ireland in both breast cancer and abortion rates. There has been a 70% increase in the risk of breast cancer in Britain between 1971 and 2002. Romania had one of Europe’s lowest breast cancer rates while abortion was illegal there under Ceausescu. Since his execution and the legalisation of abortion, breast cancer rates have risen and now Romania has one of the highest breast cancer rates in the world. In China, the enforcement of a one child policy, which includes using abortion, occurred with a subsequent 40% increase in breast cancer rates. In the United States, subsequent to the legalisation of abortion in 1973, there has been a 40% increase in the risk of breast cancer over the last 30 years. On a smaller scale, in the U.S, Washington State breast cancer rates in black women were seen to rise after state funding of abortions by impacting abortion availability to poor black women.”

27. Royal College of Psychiatrists

While stating that “the specific issue of whether or not induced abortion has harmful effects on women’s health”, a position statement issued by The Royal College of Psychiatrists on 14^th March 2008 concludes that the College “recognises that good practice in relation to abortion will include informed consent. Consent cannot be informed without the provision of adequate and appropriate information regarding the possible risks and benefits to physical and mental health. This may require the updating of patient information leaflets approved by the relevant Royal Colleges and education and training to relevant health care professionals in order to develop a good practice pathway.

“These difficult and complex issues should be addressed through additional systematic reviews led by the Royal College of Psychiatrists into the relationship between abortion and mental health. These reviews should consider whether there is evidence for psychiatric indications for abortion”.

28. Attack’s credibility tarnished

“The credibility of a new report on the mental health effects of abortion from the American Psychological Association is tarnished by the fact that the lead author, Dr Brenda Major, has violated the APA’s own sharing rules by consistently refusing to allow her own data on abortion and mental health effects to be reanalysed by other researchers”, states the Elliot Institute (USA).

“Abortion does not harm mental health, says study” was the headline in the (London) Times on the 18^th August 2008. The Science Editors claimed that Dr Major’s work, which was published the previous week at the APA’s annual conference in Boston, Massachusetts, “will undermine the campaign to tighten the UK’s abortion laws”.

Dr Major evaded a request from the Department of Health and Human Services to deliver copies of data she collected under a federal grant, which makes it actually federal property; she wrote “it would be very difficult to pull this information together”. However a researcher familiar with Major’s work, David Reardon of the Elliot Institute, has seen portions of Major’s unpublished findings.

“Brenda’s last published study using this data set was released in 2000, after she moved to her present facility in 1995”, said Reardon. “Immediately after that publication one of my colleagues requested a breakdown of details which had only been superficially summarised in one of her tables. One of her grad. students replied on her behalf with the additional summary statistics we had requested, within 48 hours. So it clearly wasn’t at all difficult for her team to access the data.

“According to Reardon, Major has not responded to any further requests regarding the data since early in 2000. ‘I know of a number of experts in the field who have requested the data, even within the last six months. But she simply doesn’t respond to their calls, emails, or letters’ said Reardon.”

29. RCOG and “three key flaws”

Professor KJS (‘Sunny’) Anand of the University of Askansas for Medical Sciences wrote to The Times (November 5^th 2007) criticising the pronouncement of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, quoted in a “Dispatches” TV programme, on the subject of what foetuses can feel.

“The RCOG view ignores the development of foetal sensory processing, functional, subplate zone (below the cerebral cortex), and sub-critical mechanisms of consciousness that support foetal memory and learning. Three key flaws beleaguer their scientific rational to rule out foetal pain.

“First, pain is not transmitted by a hard-wired system, passively transmitting impulses until ‘perception’ occurs in the cortex. Forty years of pain research have discarded this view. Secondly, foetal pain does not engage the same structures as those activated by adult pain. The foetus is not a ‘little adult’ – foetal pain is mediated by mechanisms unique from adults. Thirdly, it ignores clinical data that ablation or stimulation of the sensory cortex does not alter adult pain perception, whereas thalamic ablation or stimulation does. The foetal thalamus develops in the second trimester, well before the cortex. If the sensory cortex is not necessary for adult pain why is foetal pain held to that standard?”

30. Struggle to Regain Moral High Ground

National Right to Life News’ editorial in February 2008 quoted with satisfaction a January 26 op.ed from the Los Angeles Times by the leading pro-abortion campaigners, Frances Kissling, former president of Catholics for a Free Choice, and Kate Michelman, former president of NARAL. “Kissling and Michelman correctly point out that their heyday was when for a season they were able to shift the conversation to a discussion of ‘Who Decides?’ rather than what is decided. Twenty years ago, being pro life was dèclassé….now it is a respectable point of view”.

So what happened, according to those Abortion Establishment icons? “Did the pro-choice movement fail? Or did those opposed to abortion simply respond more effectively to the changing science as well as the social shift from the rights rage of the ‘60’s to the responsibility culture of the ‘90’s?”

“Those once excluded, such as women and minorities, are now equal. Why not welcome the foetus (who, after all, is us) into our community?”

“Why Not, indeed”, NRL News comments.

Number of US abortions falls

“Abortions dropped a stunning 8% between 2000 and 2005, according to the Guttmacher Institute,” NRL News reported in February 2008. “Although tragically high, the 1.2 million abortions performed in 2005 is down 25% since it peaked in 1990…

“Nearly one in three pregnant women aborted in the early 1980’s. By 2005, the proportion is closer to one in five”.

31. “Brain death” : should it be reconsidered?

Professor K G Karakatsanis of the Department of Nuclear Medicine, Medical School, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, has written in the journal of the International Spinal Cord Society (Spinal Cord (2008) 46, 366-401) a challenging article, giving 50 references.

…”First, many clinically ‘brain-dead’ patients maintain residual vegetative functions that are mediated or co-ordinated by the brain or the brainstem. Second, it is impossible to test for any cerebral function by clinical bedside exam, because the tracts of passage to and from the cerebrum through the brainstem are destroyed or non-functional. Furthermore, since there are limitations of clinical assessment of internal awareness in patients who otherwise lack the motor function to show their awareness, the diagnosis of ‘brain death’ is based on an unproved hypothesis. Third: many patients maintain several stereotyped movements (the so-called complex spinal cord responses and automatisms) which may originate in the brainstem. Fourth, not one of the current confirmatory tests has the necessary positive predictive value for the reliable pronouncement of human death.

“Conclusion: according to the above arguments, the assumption that all functions of the active brain (or those of the brainstem) in ‘brain-dead’ patients have ceased, is invalidated. Reconsideration of the current concept of ‘brain death’ is perhaps inevitable”.

32. “How dead are organ donors?”

A proposal to “presume consent” for organ donation has been circulating.

Dr David Hill wrote in a letter to the Daily Telegraph on 16 January 2008:

Sir – There is something deeply unpleasant in the proposal to assume consent which is not given voluntarily.

Already there is deception in calling “dead” bodies that are very much alive. The choice is not between burial and cremation (when the bodies are dead by common consent) and organ donation.

Live organs must come from live bodies that have been diagnosed dead on a technicality. No one would bury or cremate a body that was still warm and responsive, with spontaneous heartbeat and circulation possible residual brain function.

Neither can it be right to remove organs from a person who still requires some form of anaesthesia for the operation, but is undoubtedly dead at the end of the procedure. These are most probably the reasons that some 45 per cent of relatives refuse permission for their loved ones to be treated in such a way.

Dr David Hill, Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire

33. “The Dead Donor Rule and Organ Transplantation”

In the New England Journal of Medicine, August 14 2008, Robert TRUOG MD and Franklin G. Miller, PhD, ask “What has been the cost of our continued dependence on the dead donor rule? In addition to fostering conceptual confusion about the ethical requirements of organ donation, it has compromised the goals of transplantation for donors and recipients alike.” But they admit:

“Many will object that transplantation surgeons cannot legally or ethically remove vital organs from patients before death, since doing so will cause their death. However, if the critiques of the current methods of diagnosing death are correct, then such actions are already taking place on a routine basis.”

….”Whether death occurs as the result of ventilator withdrawal or organ procurement the ethically relevant precondition is valid consent by the patient or surrogate. With such consent, there is no harm or wrong done in retrieving vital organs before death, provided that anaesthesia is administered.”

Wesley Smith (11 June 2008) notes that “A Frenchman who suffered a severe heart attack has apparently spontaneously awakened after 1½ hours without a normal heartbeat (but mechanical heart massage).” Le Monde reported Doctors in Paris this year called in transplant surgeons after failing to resuscitate a 45-year-old man believed to have suffered a massive heart attack in the French capital. According to a report by the Paris University hospital’s ethics committee – seen by Le Monde newspaper – doctors continued providing heart massage for an hour and a half while they waited for the surgeons to arrive.

‘When the surgeons began operating on the man to remove his organs, he began to breathe, his pupils became responsive and he reacted to a pain test…’

“In particular, the case is likely to ignite public debate over so-called non heart beating organ donation (NHBOD) – retrieving organs when the heart stops, which has only been legal in France since last year. Before then a patient had to be declared brain dead before transplant could occur. NHBOD is legal in the UK.”

34. Professor Bryan Jennett, CBE

Professor Bryan Jennett, the neurosurgeon who coined the term “vegetative state”, died on 2 January 2008, aged 81. The Times obituary on 21 February 2008 stated “In 1980 Jennett took a leading role in the response to a BBC Panorama programme which cast doubt on the validity of the diagnosis of brain death, and hence of organ donation. Jennett’s courageous and committed support for the concept, based on telling scientific, clinical and ethical grounds, avoided long-term disruptions to transplantation programmes.”

He was called in some years ago to examine young James Rogers, who had severe brain damage from a car accident in which he was a passenger. James’ parents found that Professor Jennett “seemed to have little time for him”, and “lacked a human touch”. The report on the ‘vegetative’ state which he wrote seems strikingly outdated now. James lived for twelve years, beautifully cared for at home. Note from Editor: I remember that when the cat jumped on James’ bed he tried to stroke it. He missed by a mile, but of course he was aware. Anne Rogers had earlier upset doctors discussing his future, before he left hospital, by saying “Anyway, we wouldn’t murder him.”

35. “Talk can light up damaged brains”

“Severely brain-damaged patients show awareness that people are talking to them even when doctors have diagnosed them as being in a ‘vegetative state’, The Sunday Telegraph reported on 23 September 2007.

“Ground-breaking research at Cambridge University has revealed that while these patients are physically unable to respond, key parts of their brain light up when someone speaks to them.”

The study was led by Dr Martin Coleman . “Dr Coleman and colleagues at the Medical Research Council’s Cognition and Brain Science Unit examined 14 brain-damaged patients, seven of whom were in vegetative states. Using magnetic resonance imaging, they compared the patients’ responses to silence, incomprehensible noise, simple sentences and ambiguous sentences, with those of healthy volunteers.

They found that three of the patients showed similar brain function to the volunteers.”

36. Advance Directives – “Caveat Emptor”

Salford City Council is putting out a card for individuals to carry refusing medical treatment if they should be unable to speak for themselves (BBC News, 21^st May 2008). Note: since the Leslie Burke case there is no legal right to request treatment, but only to refuse it.

Professor Peter Millard, FRCP, comments:

Advance directives have fatal flaws. As Cicely Saunders said ‘The only thing we cannot do is speak to the dissatisfied dead’.

Organ Donor cards inform relatives and medical staff of our desire to bring life to others after our death. In contrast, Advance Directives state that under certain circumstances, we would prefer death to life.

There lies the fatal flaw. Written in health, what if, your plea “I don’t want to be kept alive on a life support machine” led to your not having life support for an illness from which you may recover?

Think about it – “That’s not what you meant”. Perhaps what you really want to say is, ‘If my death is inevitable and all efforts at intensive care are unsuccessful, I would not like you to continue life support.”

Prof Peter Millard, Emeritus Professor of Geriatrics, St. George’s University of London

“Desperately ill patients will be at risk of being killed off by friends or relatives under ‘Living Will’ laws, officials admitted yesterday.” (Daily Mail, 29 September 2008)

“The system that allows a third party to withdraw the medical treatment that is keeping a patient alive is open to abuse and fraud, they said.”

37. Reform of Mental Capacity Act?

The Daily Mail reported on 6^th August:

“Labour’s controversial living wills law was severely criticised yesterday by the Whitehall watchdog appointed to help make it work” (Social Affairs Correspondent Steve Doughty). “Richard Brooks, who was head of the Office of the Public Guardian, also said the law – which was condemned as a means of legalising euthanasia by its opponents – is to be reviewed by ministers.

“Mr Brooks said the Mental Capacity Act should be reformed and rewritten because of the delays, disputes and high costs it has piled on families.

“In the past families who need to take over the finances of, for example, an elderly relative with dementia who goes into a Care Home have been able to draw up an Enduring Power of Attorney which went instantly into effect. However, the new lasting Powers of Attorney (which convey life-and-death powers) include complex safeguards which require a 23-page form and registration by the Office of the Public Guardian,” leading to delays of up to six months before families can get control of finances.

38. “Making it Happen” – no need to choose

A conference on “Making it Happen: Using the Mental Capacity Act to Improve End of Life Care” was held in London in March 2008 and was addressed by the Government’s End of Life Care National Programme Director. Doctors are concerned by the connection of this Programme with the “Liverpool Care Pathway” (LCP) on which patients may be put without even asking for it. In a letter to the British Medical Journal (26 April 2008) Dr Adrian Treloar, a psycho-geriatrician, commenting on a British study, noted that the Pathway was being promoted for roll out across the NHS, but that there was some serious weakness in its design.

“It is clear that Continuous Deep Sedation is only appropriate for the last few hours or days of life. The Rietjens study found that many patients were treated with Continous Deep Sedation for up to a week or more. The study also found that almost all patients cared for by GP’s or nursing home physicians had artificial nutrition and hydration withheld . Sadly the researchers do not say if all nutrition and hydration was omitted.”

“There are some important lessons here for UK practice.

The eligibility criteria for the LCP do not ensure that only people who are about to die are allowed on to the Pathway. They allow people who are thought to be dying, are bed-bound, and are unable to take tablets on to the Pathway. In chronic diseases such as dementia, dying can take years but such patients may be eligible. We must learn from the observations by Reitjens et al that Deep Continuous Sedation may replace euthanasia.”

He concluded “I hope LCP can be reviewed and modified.”

Rietjens J, van Helden J, Onwuteaka-Philipsen van der Maas P, van der Heide A. Continuous Deep Sedation for patients nearing death in the Netherlands: descriptive study BMJ 2008: 336: 781-782.

He was supported in a letter online (16 April 2008) from Dr Fiona M Down, Consultant in Palliative Medicine at Strathcarron Hospice:

“We share Adrian Treloar’s concerns and comments regarding the LCP in his rapid response to the editorial and paper on Continuous Deep Sedation and have also worried about patients being commenced on the Pathway inappropriately and to this end FD advised CELT (Checklist for embarking on End of Life Treatment) which we have piloted at Strathcarron Hospice in Forth Valley in Central Scotland.”

39. “Hospital ‘starved’ elderly mother”

BBC News, Birmingham on 2 July 2008 reported ‘A woman has claimed an NHS hospital ‘starved’ her elderly mother rather than continue her care.’ Ellen Westwood, 88 was in Birmingham’s Selby Oak Hospital for two months being treated for dementia and difficult which she had previously contracted. Her daughter, Kathleen Westwood and the hospital decided in February it was in her best interests to halt fluids and nutrition – a move the family opposed.

The Trust said it followed national guidelines on elderly care.

… “We said we don’t want this to happen and they said ‘It’s happening, sorry’. I had to fight very, very hard to get it stopped. “ The hospital agreed to continue treating Mrs Westwood after the family gained a second opinion from another doctor. Kathleen Westwood took her mother home and nursed her for eight months before she had to go back into hospital and died a natural death. She says “It was wonderful to have that extra time with her.”

40. “End of Life Care” in USA

On Nancy Valko’s website, Paul A Barra looked back in October 2007 to the Hastings Center’s 2005 report “Improving End of Life Care” which seems to have inspired the British Government. “The report’s authors believe that only ‘religious conservatives and disability advocates’ think that human life is sacred. Those who believe in the sanctity of life object in principle to decisions that may hasten death (and especially the discontinuation of artificial nutrition and hydration), wrote Thomas Murray and Bruce Jennings with disapproval.

“The Hastings Center’s report was funded by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Money – in the form of cost containment for hospitals and insurance companies – also plays a role in the right-to-die ethos, according to Dr John Shea, a member of the board of the Catholic Bioethics Institute of Canada. Shea said Doctors and next of kin are beginning to ask themselves, is this treatment futile in the financial sense?

“Some hospitals have futile care guidelines in place which allow doctors to withhold food and water from a terminal patient if they think there is no hope of curing the patient, even against the wishes of the patient or his next of kin. Two states, Texas and Virginia, even have futile care laws on the books.”

41. Disability Rights Commission disbanded

Rachel Hurst, Director of Disability Awareness in Action reported in Disability Now, February 2008, that The Disability Rights Commission has been disbanded and the new Equalities and Human Rights Commission is focussing on education and awareness – not enforcement. Disabled people are among the poorest in the country and cannot afford to take cases to law.

“Access, support and inclusion are still a postcode lottery.

“The government is also wedded to devolving powers to local authorities – as long as it doesn’t have to give them ring- fenced money to implement these powers.”

Two rays of light: residential homes have been brought within the proview of the Human Rights Act, and people living with disability may now receive direct payments to purchase their own care.

42. “More can choose to die at home”

“More patients will be allowed to choose to die at home under a £286 million plan to improve end of life care” (Daily Telegraph, 17 July 2008).” There should be a team of rapid response community nurses available at all times to ensure that patients who wish to stay at home to die can do so.”

Dr Gillian Craig wrote last year:

“The NHS is suffering from the closure of too many hospitals and wards specialising in the care of the elderly. Too many skilled teams have been disbanded. Now is the time to bring in Community Geriatricians to advise and assist in the care of the elderly, and to work with their colleagues in palliative medicine for the benefit of all.”

Conservative health spokesman Stephen O’Brien said “Helping people to have the choice to die at home, if they wish, is an important step, but the Government seems to have sidelined the wonderful contribution hospices make to end of life care (Daily Mail, 17 July 2008). “ Not only that, but Gordon Brown has broken his promise of funding for the sector, meaning charitable giving is paying for NHS care.

“Some doctors have raised concerns about the criteria for deciding when someone is about to die. They fear some patients – especially dementia sufferers – are at risk of being prematurely put on the ‘pathway’ to dying.”

43. Up to 5,000 beds facing axe in cancer shake-up

The government plans to close up to 5,000 beds on cancer wards in a reorganisation of the way patients are treated, according to a report by experts in the disease, Sarah-Kate Templeton reported in the Sunday Times, 11 May 2008.

“The report by Nick Bosanquet, professor of health policy at Imperial College School of Medicine, London, and Professor Karol Sikora, medical director of Cancer Partners UK, a private cancer treatment company, comes as a shake-up of NHS hospitals, led by Lord Darzi, is expected to include widespread closures of maternity hospitals and accident and emergency units.”

There will be dedicated training centres and better co-ordination. Out-of hours services provided by cottage and district hospitals are likely to be moved out of the area by Lord Darzi, making visiting difficult

The Sunday Telegraph noted on 25^th May 2008 that more than 30,000 hospital beds had been lost in the last decade, with record cuts in NHS wards last year.

44. Rethink on rationing of drugs

The NHS drugs rationing body ordered a review of its price limit for new drugs yesterday after campaigns by patients groups denied access to treatment, the Daily Telegraph reported on 30 August 2008.

“NICE has faced protests over its refusal to recommend the use of a series of drugs including treatments for Alzheimer’s, arthritis, eyesight conditions and cancer. Kidney cancer patients and their carers protested outside the headquarters of NICE this week.

“NICE also apologised for taking more than two years to issue final guidance approving the eyesight saving drug Lucentis after previously ruling that patients would have to go blind in one eye before receiving the drug.

“Figures showing that the NHS is expected to have a £1.75 billion surplus this financial year caused further concern over treatment funding …”

In June 2007 a cancer patient aged 75 killed himself after being refused the drug Sutent, Wesley Smith noted (25 July 2008). He offered to pay for the drug himself, but was told he would have to pay for all the rest of his treatment too if he did so and this he could not afford.

An editorial in the Daily Telegraph on 27 August 2008 concluded:

“In October, a Department of Health review is expected to overturn the spiteful rule that deprives a patient of any NHS care if he pays privately for drugs. This clears the way to co-payment for drugs and will open the floodgates to a new revenue stream for healthcare. Insurance companies are waiting to offer low cost policies to top-up basic NHS care”.

45. Daily pill that halts Alzheimer’s

“A new drug halts the devastating progress of Alzheimer’s disease, say British scientists,” Jenny Hope reports in The Mail.online 29 July 2008 “It is said to be more than twice as effective as current treatments. A daily capsule of Rember, as the drug is known, stops Alzheimer’s disease progressing by as much as 81 per cent, according to trial results.

“Patients with the brain disorder had no significant decline in their mental function over a 19 month period. We appear to be bringing the worst affected parts of the brain functionally back to life,” said Dr Claude Wischik, who led the research…

“Images of the brain showed Rember had its biggest effect in the parts linked to memory, where the density of tan tangles is greatest, with better blood flow to these areas. The drug works by dissolving the tangle of tan fibres which release waste products that kill nerve cells, and by preventing the fibres from becoming tangled…

“The trial was a Phase 2 Study, which checks the safety and efficiency of the drug, but if a large-scale Phase 3 trial due next year repeats the findings, the drug could be available for prescribing by 2012. At the same time, the research team is investigating a way of diagnosing Alzheimer’s at its earliest stages when tan tangles are first being formed in the brain…”

Wesley Smith points out that this possible breakthrough owed nothing to cloned human embryos.

46. Oozing compassssssiooonnnnnn …. from Wesley Smith’s ‘Secondhand Smoke’

posted 29 July 2008

“First, I predicted it in Forced Exit. Then, it happened. And now, it has happened again: A very ill Oregon man has been denied treatment under Medicaid in Oregon to fight his prostate cancer – but has been told that the state will happily pay for the state assisted suicide. From the story:

“Since the spread of his prostate cancer, 53-year-old Randy Stroup of Dexter, Ore., has been in a fight for his life. Uninsured and unable to pay for expensive chemotherapy, he applied to Oregon’s state-run health plan for help.”

“Lane Individual Practice Association (LIPA), which administers the Oregon Health Plan in Lane County, responded to Stroup’s request with a letter saying the state would not cover Stroup’s pricey treatment, but would pay for the cost of physician-assisted suicide. “It dropped my chin to the floor,” Stroup told FOX News. “[How could they] not pay for medication that would help my life, and yet offer to pay to end my life?”

“The letter, which has been sent to other terminal patients throughout Oregon, follows guidelines established by the state legislature.

“And now the oozing compassssssiooonnnnnn of assisted suicide is revealed to all. And the same agenda is at the root of Futile Care Theory. When life gets tough, it is time for the ill to get going onto whatever comes next.”

47. Suicide gurus on websites

“A network of suicide gurus who use the internet to advise people how to kill themselves is exposed by the Sunday Telegraph today,” wrote their investigative reporter Patrick Sower (17 February 2008).

“They are blamed for prompting depressed and vulnerable youngsters to take their own lives. One, an American Satanist who boasts of writing a guide to the subject, says What’s the problem with ending your life via suicide? Another is a ‘pro-choice’ Dutch writer whose website includes detailed accounts of dozens of suicide methods …

“The findings follow the cluster of suicides among young people in Bridgend, where a coroner is now re-examining nine deaths on top of 16 suspected suicides under investigation. It emerged on Friday that another two young people from the Welsh town had been found hanged. They were both members of a social networking website.

“The Minister of Justice said it would be difficult to frame a law to ban suicide websites without also criminalising counselling services or works of fiction.”

Australia already bans them.

48. Euthanasia Convictions in Sydney

Two women were found guilty of criminal violence in a euthanasia case decided in the NSW Supreme Court on June 19, Right to Life Australia reports. “Shirley Justins was found guilty of manslaughter and her friend Caren Jenning was convicted of being an accessory to manslaughter. Justins and Jenning had conspired to import the drug Newbutal from Mexico and then Justins administered a lethal dose to her partner, Graham Wylie, who was suffering from advanced Alzheimer’s disease, in March 2006. Both women were active in Philips Nitshke’s Exit international lobby group.

“In the week before Graham Wylie’s deliberate poisoning, Shirley Justins had his will changed in her favour.”

49.Euthanasia Bill withdrawn in Victoria

“At Right to Life Australia we were busying ourselves in the week leading up to the 25^th June, preparing an action alert mail-out, to get our members down to parliament to protest the Bill. However, we received a phone call from a Liberal member of the upper house, on Thursday 19^th June, informing us that the Euthanasia Bill had been removed from the Notice Paper!

“Only an hour or so before, we got word of the convictions of Shirley Justins and Caren Jenning.”

50. First International Symposium Against Euthanasia and Assisted Suicide

Toronto was the venue for this first international symposium for opponents of euthanasia and assisted suicide, in early December 2007 (Life Site News.com). Steve Jalsevac reported that this was “an impressive event” – “there was a true coalition of diverse individuals with often diametrically opposed views on abortion, faith, homosexuality and other issues. However, they were all generally united in the common belief that the world has now entered a very dangerous phase of increasingly approved killing of people with disabilities, seriously ill and otherwise vulnerable persons via euthanasia or assisted suicide.”

“Hospitals across North America and Europe have become battlegrounds where relatives of patients struggle against doctors, staff negligence and increasingly wilful deprivation of life sustaining treatment. After hearing the talks and from discussions in the halls with participants, one quickly realised that no relative should be left alone in any hospital or other care facility without regular visits. There should be lots of regular questions from family regarding treatment and nutrition and hydration being provided.”

51. Eugenic use of birth control

Ann Farmer protested in a letter to the Daily Telegraph (27 August 2008) against the inclusion of a stamp commemorating Marie Stopes in a series to mark women’s achievements.

“Stopes was a notorious eugenicist and an anti-Semite who advocated the sterilisation of poor women to promote the welfare of ‘the Race’. Indeed her birth control organisation was called the Society for Constructive Birth Control and Racial Progress, and her clinics were established in poor areas of London to control the numbers of the poor.”

52. By Their Fruits a mine of information

Ann Farmer’s new book “By Their Fruits – Eugenics, Population Control and the Abortion Campaign” published by the Catholic University of America Press (ISBN 978-0-8132-1530-3) is meticulously researched. The footnotes appear at the bottom of pages which refer to them, for ease of reading. The author leaves no stone unturned and describes what is underneath in accurate detail.

In the preamble she writes “It has been assumed that abortion rights were won by feminists: histories of abortion reform have typically emphasised the gender of campaigners. However, pro life feminists claim an authentic historical mantle of feminist opposition to abortion, and there is a large body of hitherto neglected evidence that the English abortion campaign actually originated in movements opposed to feminism, namely eugenics and population control; funded with American money, this campaign created a domino effect on abortion legislation that spread across virtually every Western nation, including the United States.”

In the last chapter, “Beyond Abortion”, She writes “Advocates such as Haldane, Hamilton and Muller, along with Jenkins, Chance and Browne, and later, Simms, Furedi and Seal, portrayed abortion as “bestowing freedom from Baird’s ‘tyranny of pregnancy’. Instead of freedom, however, the abortion movement has delivered its antithesis in the very modern tyranny of reproductive ‘experts’. Despite compassionate claims, it has brought death and destruction to those it purported to champion because it has been a campaign by elitists for elitists, characterised by the arrogation of the power of life and death over the weak and those seen as inferior.”

53. Aborting Black Babies

“Mikes Adams, a criminology professor a The University of North Carolina at Wilmington, notes that 512 of every 1000 black pregnancies end in abortion and 37% of all aborted babies are black … despite the fact that blacks comprise only 12% of the population (Family and Life, Dublin April 2008). He urges students to sponsor a ‘genocide awareness day’.

54. “Fatal Misconception”

Matthew Connelly’s book “Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Control World Population” published by the Bettknap Press of Harvard University Press (ISBN 978-0-674-022, 23-6) was reviewed by Dominic Lawson in the Sunday Times, 18 May 2008.

“The population freaks are back in town… Against this background the publication of Matthew Connelly’s book is not just perfectly timed, it is essential. The assistant professor of history at Columbia University has delivered a devastating account of the population control movement; he demonstrates, detail by shocking detail, how a movement that believed it was acting from the highest humanitarian ideals became responsible for abuses of human rights on a global scale, ruining millions of lives in a grotesque eugenic experiment..

“The intrauterine device known as the Dalkon shield had already been the subject of lawsuits in America: it featured rows of prongs that made it extremely painful to insert or remove and had a multifilament “tail” that provided a path for infection. Hundreds of thousands of these unsellable monstrosities were enthusiastically picked up on the cheap by the head of USaid’s ‘population programme’ - with inevitably gruesome consequences.

“This was not considered a problem by those in the front line of the ‘war against population explosion’ – far from it. A note of a 1962 conference speech by one of those warriors, Robert Wilson, the Chair of Obstetrics and gynaecology at Temple University, makes this claim:

“We have to stop functioning like doctors if we look at this from an overall long term point of view … perhaps the individual patient is expendable in the general scheme of things, particularly if the infection she acquires is sterilising but not lethal.”

55. A different strategy

“In Swaziland, the number of people reporting one or more partners in the past month was halved after an aggressive 2006 campaign focussing on the danger of having a ‘secret lover’” (Malcolm Potts and others,“Reassessing HIV Prevention” Science Magazine 9 May 2008)”. There are… few demonstrated replicable approaches in reducing multiple sexual partnerships on a large scale. Nonetheless, mass mobilisation of the community, as occurred with gay men in the United States and among heterosexuals in Uganda, can effectively encourage behaviour change.”

The Anglican Archbishop Orombi of Uganda, a strong advocate of Christian values, has had more success with his flock than with the see of Canterbury. He is one of the rebel clerics signing up to the Jerusalem Declaration of 2008.

Dr Peggy Norris DSG (1921-2007) in her own words:

“In 1967 a High Court judge and doctor, Sir Roger Ormerod, stated that in a National Health Service the concept of ethical obligations to the State is introduced.”

“Clearly there is the inherent danger that doctors may feel they were State employees, whilst forgetting it is the citizens who provide their salaries through taxation. The professional ethic of service to the patient must remain immutable otherwise the trust between doctor and patient will eventually be destroyed. In this century we have seen what happened when doctors considered it their duty to submit to State decree.”

“The Hippocratic ethic was accepted worldwide regardless of race or creed: the slave and the wounded enemy were to be treated like their masters. This was a revolutionary concept and doctors became non-combatants. It was the Hippocratic ethic which inspired the Red Cross. Hospitals and first aid stations when captured was allowed to continue treating the wounded. Indeed, during the Falklands War I heard a doctor proudly boast on television ‘We have not lost an enemy soldier yet.’

In contrast the eugenic ideas of Malthus and Galton in the 19^th century did not comply with the ethic of respect for every person…”

From a speech to the World Congress of Medical Law in Israel, September 1994.

In Brief:

Debbie Purdy, granted review

Debbie Purdy, supported by “Dignity in Dying” was given permission in June for judicial review of the law against assisted suicide. The case will be heard in October.

“French parents can register name and death of miscarried baby

a France’s highest court, the Cour de Cassation, ruled February 6 that parents can name and register the deaths of miscarried and stillborn babies, no matter how young they were when they died” (NRL News, March 2008)

“Previously, French officials would only register unborn babies older than 22 weeks or weighing more than 1.1 pounds, or babies who briefly lived outside the mother’s womb, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).”

The Bank that invests in Life

“Britain is about to open Kingscord, its largest blood bank. The pioneering scheme has been set up at Kings College Hospital in London and will officially open next month. (The Times, Body and Soul, 2 August 2008). It will be run by the Anthony Nolan Trust, which believes that the bank will provide a life-line to those in need of a bone-marrow transplant and could save up to 400 lives a year…”

Nazi doctor wins medical award

By Alex Schadenberg in “Secondhand Smoke” posted 25 May 2008.

“Dr. Hans-Joachim Sewering, a 92-year-old German physician has been honoured for performing unequalled service in the cause of freedom of the practice and the independence of the medical profession, and to the nation’s health system by the German Federation of Internal Medicine.”

“The Anti-Defamation League in the U.S. claims that Sewering sent up to 900 children to their death at a euthanasia centre. Sewering has admitted being a member of the SS, but he has denied being responsible for euthanasia deaths.”

Wesley Smith recalled (27 May) that a revelation of the doctor’s past some time ago, led to his having to quit as head of the World Medical Association.” He claimed that it was all a Jewish conspiracy – now he gets an award.

Washington State to vote on PAS

A measure to legalise physician-assisted suicide (PAS) in Washington State will be on the ballot in November. It is modelled on the law in Oregon.

Doctors in Portugal defy Government

Doctors in Portugal are resisting threats by the country’s Government to force them to remove pro-life principles from their ethical code, “Anthony Ozimic reports in the Pro Life Times, March 2008. Not only has the Portuguese Medical Association refused to cave in to the Government’s demands it has re-elected Pedro Nunes as its Chairman, who has promised to defend the unborn, choosing him instead of another candidate who intended to change the code.“ (Note: The British General Medical Council changed its rules the moment the Abortion Act was passed). “The Portuguese Bar Association is supporting the doctors’ association, criticising the Government’s moves as ‘arrogant and overbearing’.”

Italian Doctors increasingly object to abortion

“Italy’s health ministry reported April 22 that more doctors are refusing to participate in abortions for moral reasons,” according to Agence France-Presse (quoted in NRL News). Allowed by law to opt out of performing abortions if it violates their conscience, 69.2% of Italy’s gynaecologists refused to participate in the practice in 2007, AFP reported. This figure rose significantly from 2003, when the number was 58.7%.”

Brazilian Legislators Reject Pro-Abortion Bill

“Legislators in the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies rejected a bill May 7 that would have expanded legalisation of abortion in the country, NRL News reported in June 2008. Currently abortion is only legal for the life of the mother or for rape.”

Purpose built machines

Police investigating abortion clinics in Barcelona used by British women found purpose-built machines attached to the drains that were used to crush aborted babies. The clinics allegedly performed abortions into the eighth month of pregnancy (Image News, January 2008).

Coming Events

A memorial service for Dr Peggy Norris, DSG, founder with Dr John Linklater of the British Section of Doctors who Respect Human Life, will be held at 4.30pm on Friday 3^rd October at St Agnes Church, 59 St Mary’s Road, Huyton, Liverpool L36 5SR. All are welcome.

Annual General Meeting

The AGM of the British Section of the World Federation of Doctors who Respect Human Life will be held at 27 Walpole Street, London SW3 4QS on Saturday 4^th October 2008 at 12.30pm