Fat a source for stem cells LOS ANGELES, Calif - Human fat collected by liposuction shows promise of providing a plentiful and ethical source of replacement cells for a variety of medical treatments, illustrating that the perceived need for embryonic stem cells is wrong. Researchers from two American Universities, UCLA and University of Pittsburgh, have isolated stem cells (cells with the potential [...]
Fetal pain study LONDON, England - A British study suggests that an unborn child might feel pain as early as 20 weeks. The head of the government-appointed Medical Research Council at Edinburgh University in the United Kingdom said an unborn child was absolutely aware of pain by 24 weeks and perhaps as early as 20 weeks - earlier than the previously accepted [...]
New Physicians for Life president VANCOUVER - Dr. Will Johnston has succeeded Dr. Robert Pankratz as president of Canadian Physicians for Life. Johnston, co-chair of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition of B.C., heads the organization of 3,000 members who are committed to the Hippocratic Oath and the principle, "first, do no harm." Recently, PFL wrote Health Minister Allan Rock urging a dialogue on [...]
In recent months, the U.S. House of Representatives has banned all human cloning. So has Russia. France and Germany have called for an international ban on such practices. The United Kingdom, even though it allows the grisly practice of therapeutic cloning, banned reproductive human cloning last year. In fact, 23 countries have fully or partially banned human cloning. Yet Canada's Health Minister, [...]
Political activists have long been aware of how dangerous the United Nations is to the preservation of traditional values throughout the world, but among the general public it is remarkable how entrenched the mythology of the nice, peace-loving, justice-promoting international entity has become. The recent UN conference on "racism" gave the international organization much greater exposure among the general public than is [...]
Last August, the president of the Commission of the Estates General on the Situation and the Future of the French Language in Quebec, Gérald Larose, an ex-union leader and PQ apparatchik, presented his report to the minister of culture and to the media. This commission was created in June 2000 by then-Premier Lucien Bouchard to calm down the PQ radicals of Montreal [...]
We have a lot of heroes out there, but many of their names don't often hit the pages of the newspapers or even warrant 15-second clips on television. And I think at this sad time we should stop and honour heroes - big and small. There was young David Michael Barkway who courageously led a group of passengers on a hijacked passenger [...]
Recently I saw a TV program on the subject of the increase of violence among young people. A few days later I came across an article in a secular paper on the same subject. Both the TV program and the article suggested reasons for this sad phenomenon and the common denominator seemed to be the breakdown of the family. This gave me [...]
Today American flags fly from homes, mailboxes, trees, driveways and car aerials. Yellow ribbons representing more than 5,000 people missing and killed in the World Trade Centre disaster are displayed throughout the country. It has been said that if only America would return to prayer the eugenic designs that have surfaced in the nation's policies could be corrected. But Americans have always [...]
Media ignores study linking crime and abortion NEW YORK, N.Y. - Despite widespread media attention in recent years of a dubious study linking falling crime rates and the availability of abortion, there was scant media coverage of a study that illustrates abortion increases the crime rate. In May, a study by John R. Lott of Yale Law School and John Whitley of [...]
Pro-lifer takes helm of British Tories LONDON, U.K. - Socially conservative Iain Duncan Smith was elected leader of the Conservative Party, defeating the socially liberal Kenneth Clarke following an often nasty two-month leadership race. The UK's Society for the Protection of Unborn Children reports Duncan Smith voted pro-life in Parliament on issues of cloning and euthanasia. He made family values central to [...]
Prisons ordered to allow sex changes VANCOUVER - The Canadian Human Rights Commission ruled that the federal prison system's ban on sex change operations for inmates is discriminatory and gave Corrections Canada six months to come up with a new policy. It also directed Corrections Canada to improve the way it serves the needs of transexualists in jail. The ruling is based [...]
In today's society, the often excessive celebration of Halloween (particularly by adults and teens) could be seen as a symptom of a trend towards social breakdown and disintegration. In an increasingly secular and multicultural society, such apparently non-religious holidays as Halloween are celebrated all the more. The theologian and social critic Richard John Neuhaus has pointed out that current-day society delights in [...]
Like a lot of other kids, my sex education began with an older sibling, my sister, slyly telling me her version of it, while we played Barbies one afternoon. I could not look at Ken and Barbie, or my Mom and Dad, the same way for a long time. A few years later my mother slipped me a glossy brochure, pink because [...]
The topic of sex education is a battleground of competing studies, clashing values, and alarming statistics with all the combatants sincere in their beliefs that they alone fight for the good of the young. On one side of the ring stand the religious and social "conservatives" who want abstinence in and condoms off. And on the left side of the ring are [...]