Bioethicist John Haas clarifies church teaching on extraordinary medical care. A Quebec study showing a 20-fold increase since 2000 in the number of babies who survive abortion only to die in hospital demonstrates the need for a Canadian “born-alive infant protection law,” says the Toronto-based Campaign Life Coalition. The Quebec study, just published in Neonatology, studied 12,000-plus infant deaths between [...]
Few Canadians have been more widely revered for a lifetime of benevolent accomplishments than Dr. L.L. (Barrie) deVeber, professor emeritus in Paediatrics and Oncology at Western University. So who, exactly, is this exemplary intellectual and physician -- some kind of saint? Well, not quite. Just ask his younger brother George. In Barrie: The Memoirs of Dr. L.L. deVeber as told to S. [...]
Scientists have discovered a new kind of stem cell. In the Dec. 10 issue of Nature, a group of international researchers led by Andras Nagy from Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto reprogrammed adult mouse cells to create F-cells, a new kind of stem cell that grows in fuzzy-looking colonies. The results came as part of Project Grandiose, an effort by Nagy and [...]
Wesley Smith questions the claim that cloning technology will not be used for reproduction. For the first time, American scientists successfully cloned humans. Four embryo clones were permitted to develop into blastocysts before being harvested for their stem cells. The findings of the scientists led by Shoukhrat Mitalipov, a reproductive biology specialist at the Oregon Health and Science University in [...]
The man who discovered induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) has received the 2012 Nobel Prize for medicine. Dr. Shinya Yamanaka, a researcher from Kyoto University, developed a new process in 2006 that used four genes to reprogram skin cells in mice to behave like embryonic stem cells, which are pluripotent and thus capable of developing into any cell of the human body. [...]
Justice Lynn Smith The federal government has come out strongly against assisted suicide in an appeal against a British Columbia judgment declaring the ban to be unconstitutional. On Oct. 26, it filed its legal argument with the B.C. Court of Appeal, claiming that assisted suicide is prohibited in order to protect the most vulnerable members of society who might otherwise [...]
Toronto scientists at Mount Sinai Hospital have discovered problems in using reprogrammed stem cells for personalized organ repair. “It looks like the reprogramming process which creates (embryonic-like) stem cells from skin cells is creating damage or mutations,” said Andras Nagy, one of the lead authors of the study published in the journal Nature. These cells, known as induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS [...]
Interim Staff On Feb. 7, doctors in France announced that the country’s first “saviour sibling” was born. Popularly termed a “bébé-médicament” (medicine baby), a saviour sibling is conceived through in-vitro fertilization and screened to ensure its cells could be used to treat a brother or sister with a genetic disorder. Umut-Talha (“our hope” in Turkish) was born on Jan. 26 in good [...]
By as split 4-4-1 advisory decision, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld a 2008 Quebec Court of Appeal decision that found some of the federal Assisted Human Reproduction Act intruded on province’s jurisdiction over health. Pro-life and faith groups condemned the decision because it gave provinces control of the creation, destruction and manipulation of human embryos. The Supreme Court upheld in part [...]
An inexpensive genetic test has been developed that can detect 448 genetic childhood diseases. The makers of the test are hoping to expand this to 580 conditions within the next six months and the Beyond Batten Disease Foundation, which funded the National Center for Genome Resources research hopes that the new universal screening process will be available commercially within a [...]
Some scientists still want ESCR A faster and more efficient way of deriving stem cells from ordinary skin cells has been discovered, announced scientists in Boston on Sept. 30, who said their discovery will revolutionize an already-booming field of medical advances through adult stem cells. Meanwhile, stem cells derived from human embryos cannot claim even one success in human treatment. A technique [...]
The creation of the world’s first self-replicating synthetic bacterial cell has been greeted with optimism and controversy. Scientists at the J. Craig Venter Institute, a genome research organization, announced their accomplishment on May 20. The team was able to construct the 1.08 million base pair chromosome of a modified Mycoplasma mycoides cell using the digitized genome of M. mycoides and chemically synthesizing [...]
National Affairs correspondent Rory Leishman points out yet another shocking disregard for human life on the part of the Obama administration.
The very real possibility of an immanent ethical stem cell breakthrough has many researchers in the US and Canada excited.
The Interim editor Paul Tuns takes a look at Obama’s recent anti-life decisions regarding embryonic stem cell research.