At a White House ceremony on July 19, President George Bush explained his decision to veto a bill to fund embryonic stem cell research. He pointed out: “Embryonic stem cells come from human embryos that are destroyed for their cells. Each of these human embryos is a unique human life with inherent dignity and matchless value.” To underline this point, [...]
Interim Staff The Interim is often asked which Canadian charities support embryonic stem cell research – research that destroys human beings at the embryonic stage of life. Compiling this information is an ongoing and arduous project and we thank LifeSiteNews.com for maintaining a page (http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/sep/060918a.html) listing such charitable agencies and societies. As LifeSiteNews states: “This is an ongoing project and this list [...]
Marketing experts understand the value of “branding,” the creation of a mental connection in the mind of a consumer between the product and its name, slogan and advertising design scheme. A successful marketing campaign creates an indelible symbolic embodiment of all the information connected to a product. The news media’s manipulation of the public debate around abortion and embryonic stem cell research [...]
Interim Staff On August 23, Advanced Cell Technology, a private, Worcester, Mass.-based biotechnology firm, announced to the world that it had developed a means of acquiring embryonic cells that would put to rest ethical concerns about this type of research. In a study published online in the journal Nature, ACT researchers claimed to have retrieved single cells of two- to three-day-old human [...]
In a press conference at the Ottawa Hospital June 27, doctors announced the first-ever non-heart beating organ donation (NHBD) procedure preformed in Canada. The procedure, also known as donation after cardiac death (DCD), typically involves a person who requires a ventilator and, although he has measurable brain function, is determined to have no hope of recovery. The doctors remove the ventilator from [...]
A prominent fertility doctor, who provides sex-selection of tourists’ embryos, considers himself to be working in “the happiest field in medicine, where we’re basically helping couples achieve dreams that otherwise they might not be able to achieve.” For the past five years, Dr. Jeffrey Steinberg’s Fertility Institutes of Los Angeles and Las Vegas have offered pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) for the purpose [...]
The Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) has announced that it will allow the creation of living human embryos specifically for research purposes. Although pro-life advocates working to kill the Liberal government’s 2002 Assisted Reproduction Act predicted that embryonic stem cell research with “fresh embryos” would be the next move, even though the bill purported to protect against this type of research, [...]
On July 19, 2006 days, George W. Bush used his veto power for the first time. The issue on which he finally took out his pen to thwart the excesses of Congress was important: embryonic stem cell research. After the House of Representatives passed a bill that would have mandated federal funding of stem cell research - which requires the killing of [...]
I was at the Ninth National March for life in Ottawa recently, walking along in front of the Parliament buildings, when I spotted a familiar face pushing a small wooden white cart in front of him through the crowds on the sidewalk. He wore an oversized T-shirt emblazoned front and back: “I’M PRO-LIFE.” I called out to him: “Hey! What are you [...]
Tissue engineering breakthrough might be a solution to the organ donation shortage Complete urinary bladders grown from patients' own cells have been transplanted and functioning for as long as four years, reports a group of researchers in The Lancet. Dubbed the "neo-bladders," the new organs have been working fine and have significantly improved the health of seven young patients aged four to [...]
Health Canada is not planning to take any action against the practice of selling human ova on the internet, despite the ostensible prohibition of the practice under Canada’s Assisted Reproduction Technologies Act. Citing a loophole in the legislation, a Health Canada official says the act does not ban the advertising of human genetic materials, only their purchase. “It’s a payment to a [...]
On Feb. 16, Ontario New Democrat MPP and House Leader Peter Kormos introduced a private member’s bill that proposed to make organ donation automatic for everyone, unless the individual has previously “opted out” of the system. Kormos said the plan “will help ease the organ-donation crisis,” in which there are not enough organs donated to meet the demand for transplants. The bill [...]
When you get to the bottom of the issue of organ donation, there are two main arguments used against pro-lifers in their concerns about the practice: dying patients don’t need organs anyway and improving another person’s life is a truly pro-life position. Neither argument holds any water. Regarding the first argument, the moral principle is simple: it is never permissible to purposely [...]
The spectacular rise and fall of maverick South Korean cloning “hero,” Professor Hwang Woo-Suk, a veterinarian and professor of biotechnology at Seoul National University, is being taken as a lesson in the power of media hype. Despite the fact that most reputable specialists in cloning had believed such a breakthrough was decades away, Hwang stunned the scientific world by claiming to have [...]
Paul Tuns and John-Henry Westen The Interim U.S. researchers and a sycophantic mainstream media are trumpeting the latest embryonic stem cell “discovery” – stem cells that are derived ethically from embryos. According to the scientific magazine Nature, Massachusetts-based biotech firm Advanced Cell Technology has developed a procedure that removes single cells from early-stage embryos without always killing the embryo. Blastomere separation – [...]