AMA warns "women" about Spring Break

It's tempting to treat this story as a "Duh!" moment. But I can't just dismiss these numbers.
And then, there's the treatment in the press. For example, take a look at "explanation" for the behavior (with a backhanded slap for Concerned Women of America) at the bottom of this op-ed on the American Medical Associations's study, from a juvenile op-ed on the Time Magazine website:

Thursday, Mar. 23, 2006
The Myth About Girls Going Wild
Why alcohol has become just a handy excuse
By ANA MARIE COX

The arrival of Spring Break season causes such pursed lips among social commentators that it's a wonder they can get the words out. While college-age women "will be tempted to lay caution and responsibility aside," warned an expert, "I challenge them to enjoy a delightful, 'fun in the sun' break from school." Many women appear to be gleefully accepting that challenge, according to an American Medical Association study now making the rounds among anxious parents checking in on the Katie-and-Matt time slot. Of the female spring breakers surveyed, 30% said that sun and alcohol were an "essential part of life," 74% said that spring break meant increased sexual activity, 40% said that they passed out, and 13% reported having sex with more than one partner. Experts attributed this unruly behavior to its celebration in the Girls Gone Wild video series and, less overtly, in similarly lascivious TV shows like MTV’s Spring Break and The O.C. Bacchanalian b-roll from these shows spooled out a tape loop of teen debauchery as morning-show guests fretted over its impact. I didn’t know whether to wring my hands or cover my eyes.

The Concerned Women for America, a family-values group, took it upon themselves to warn the women who fall into Jell-O-shot-induced exhibitionism and public sexuality that they'll regret it later. And it’s true: cellphone cameras and sites like drunkuniversity.com (exactly what it sounds like) mean that candid sex tapes aren’t just for celebrities any more. The new scarlet letter is a URL.

The narrative of some clean-cut co-ed undone by an intoxicating combination of Long Island ice teas and male encouragement is an appealing one; after all, both Katie Couric’s furrowed brow and the appeal of Girls Gone Wild depend on believing these young women weren’t feral to begin with. True, they may not be in a state of permanent wildness, but they weren’t exactly tame either. A less widely cited statistic among the AMA’s shockers was that women on Spring Break "use alcohol as an excuse to engage in outrageous behavior," which implies that the problem with engaging in public sex on vacation is that they’d be getting more of it at home if only they were brave enough.

The truth is we all do stupid things when we’re drunk — but we all want to do stupid things. Boys get into bar fights, girls mud wrestle. And of course, aggressive sexuality is a form of aggression. In See Jane Hit, a new book about girls and violence, psychologist James Garbarino links unprecedented violence among girls — the rate of aggravated assault among girls younger than 18 increased 57% between 1990 and 1998 — directly to equally unprecedented hypersexuality. He sees such trends as the less savory outcome of freeing girls to excel beyond gender stereotypes.

For Gabarino, the same cultural shifts that have allowed young women to play sports, become mathematicians and enter into politics now come with an increase in "social toxicity," which he defines as "spirit-deadening superficial materialism, reduced benevolent adult authority and supervision, civic cynicism, and fragmentation of community." Young women today are like superheroes in the first pages of the comic book, blessed with incredible powers and not yet aware of the responsibilities that come with them.

Garbarino is no reactionary preaching from the same book as the Concerned Women for America, and his prescription for this cultural conundrum is not the kryptonite of post-feminist retreat to the cotillion — and then the kitchen. Anti-feminists were wrong, anyway. Freeing girls from stereotypes hasn’t made them more masculine, it’s made them more more. Unbound from cultural constraints, they don’t flip to the male side of the spectrum. They just flip out. Maybe it would be progress if we had a definition of femininity expansive enough to include shaking one's thing without raising one's top — so that girls could go a little wild without having to rely on what we used to refer to as the "sorority girl's mating call": "I am soooo drunk."

Copyright © 2006 Time Inc. All rights reserved.

Effect of cord clamping time on babies' blood count

I've read concerns that collection of cord blood for banking might cause anemia in newborn babies. When I delivered babies, I would wait (whenever possible) for the cord to stop pulsing. As a believer in natural childbirth (and student of midwives, as well as allopathic physicians), I have always believed that it's better to make sure the baby gets all his iron at birth. Breast milk has iron, but the iron stores in the "extra" blood delivered from the placenta before the cord is clamped probably gives the newborn a needed reserve. However I know that many do not wait. Besides, babies born by Ceasarean section not only are delivered above the plane of the placenta, but the surgeons don't have the luxury of waiting. I had never read any correlation between anemia and the timing of cord clamping, though.

The Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Hospital Italiano in Buenos Aires, Argentina did an experiment, published in The Journal of American Academy of Pediatrics. There doesn't appear to be any danger of an huge increase in newborn anemia from timing the clamping of the umbilical cord with the collection of blood for "banking" in mind.

As a matter of fact, the study is actually done with the assumption that some docs believe that there is too much of an increase in hematocrit (blood count) if the clamping is done late. Some docs believe that newbord jaundice is related to those "extra" red blood cells.

Answering a reader "bravely."

An anonymous reader has noted that when I complained about CBS' touting of destructive stem cell research, the example that I gave involved the use of patient's own stem cells. These cells would not treat Batten disease, which is a inborn error of metabolism. This type of disease is a genetic defect in the metabolism of those born with the disease. The children either do not have or have a defective gene that guides the formation of a certain protein, enzyme or groups of proteins and enzymes. In these cases, it's true that the patient's own cells would have the same problem and could not correct the defect.

However, the point was not the particular disease, but the fact that CBS had run two programs promoting destructive, embryonic stem cells in a very short time. There had been no balance in reporting the treatments we already have from non-destructive umbilical cord and autologous stem cells. I was suggesting that their audience would be interested in some of the ethical stem cell trials. (Actually, I was suggesting that the reporters were showing disregard or bias against the non-destructive, adult and embryonic stem cell treatments in their zeal for the results of the intentional and interventional destruction of very young human life.)

On the subject of Batten disease, there is a Phase III (three) trial ongoing under government funding which is recruiting children with Batten disease. The grant protocol states the intention to treat with a hemopoietic - or bone marrow or, most probably, cord blood - stem cells. There are other genetic metabolic defects which have been treated with cord blood stem cells, including Krabbe's disease and Hurler's syndrome. And yet, CBS has not done a show with Paul Orchard, M.D. or any of the other doctors and scientists doing research on ethical stem cells. A great story could cover Walter Low, Ph.D., who has announced that his team has found a new type of stem cell in umbilical cord blood that has promise for treating nerve diseases.

In contrast, the particular program I was discussing reported on a study utilizing "fetal" stem cells, which can only be harvested from aborted children or, possibly, miscarriages. The company doing the study is not telling us exactly where they got their cells, just noting that they do not come from embryos. These aren't the cells derived from umbilical cord or placental tissue like those above, which are correctly designated "fetal tissues." The University of Oregon press release announcing the government's okay for the trial describes how they are obtained:

Neural stem cells, a rare subset of brain cells, are isolated from the human fetal brain, purified, propagated, and tested; they are then frozen in cell banks from which HuCNS-SC doses can be prepared.

To thine own self be true

This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow,
as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.

This ancient proverb, phrased so beautifully by William Shakespeare in the form of fatherly advice (Polonius, in Hamlet) echos Socrates' "Know thyself," and Jiminy Crickets' "Still, small voice that people won't listen to." Unfortunately, that's no longer "the trouble with the world today."

The Roanoke, Virginia Times has an editorial today about the controversies surrounding the practice of medicine, with and without a conscience. The controversy, of course, is abortion and possible abortifacient medications. There is a poll on the site, asking the question, Should doctors' religious or ethical beliefs shape the way they practice medicine? The number of votes as of this writing is 6, with 83% answering "yes." I plan to check back often and will not be surprised if the results become skewed the other way.

The pressure on medical professionals is to ignore their consciences - their choice - and to "just do their jobs" or "follow the law."

Ethicist Julian Salvescu (link to the report in this blog) wrote his opinion in The British Medical Journal in February, stating that the practice of medicine according to personal conscience and guided by religious beliefs and "value-driven medicine" is a door to a Pandora's box of idiosyncratic, bigoted, discriminatory medicine.

The statement is in itself a "value-driven" belief, as are judgements such as "idiosyncratic," "bigoted," and "discriminatory." As is any call for medical ethics. The safest "choice" is to allow individuals to be true to themselves and their consciences, in order to encourage them not to be "false to any man."

Why I quit being a "Primary Care Provider"

Over at FreeRepublic, they're discussing this week's New York Times guest editorial, "The Doctor Will See You for Seven Minutes," by Peter Salgo, MD. I highly recommend that your read the op-ed at the NYT in full, and then the thread at FR.


3 years ago, I closed my office and went to work part time and back to school for a Bioethics Masters. I was already trying to change the system, and knew I needed more initials to get attention.

These are not in order of importance. (The immediate cause was number 7, the most compelling was number 8, and the ones that made me begin to look at the rest are all the ones that mention the government, which is supposed to work for the citizens).

But, I got burned out and fed up with:

1. The assumption that I was only in it for the money. After all, I just looked at them and wrote a prescription, right?

2. The assumption that I was committing "fraudandabuse" - guilty until proven innocent - with Federal felonies and audits I would have to pay for if ever I got above the radar. That's without even considering that I was hearing about armed raids on hospital records departments and docs being harassed for refusing to allow government officials to video tape and copy records -

3. Trying to learn and follow E&M codes, ICD-9/10 codes, and the latest documentation requirements for each.

4. The government mandates for technology and "certificates" in order to practice medicine (look under the microscope, dip a urinalysis, run a flu test that medicare wouldn't pay for anyway).

5. The "patient satisfaction surveys" and the insurance company black box quality assurance reports (I don't know what they're measuring and half the patient names on their lists were either on-call patients or people I hadn't seen in years) and the bundling of charges.

6. Stable or decreasing fees, while my own health insurance, malpractice fees, licensing and certification fees, rent, utilities and all the other overhead went up.


7. Employees who would quit for a new job paying $3 an hour without health insurance, when I had been - in effect - taking money from my take home pay to make sure they had insurance.

8. Hearing about Dr. Chiropractor, Dr. Nurse practitioner, the school medical clinic nurse practitioner and the ER doc from Saturday morning and what a great or what a bad job they were doing. (They might have been great people and practitioners, but the care was not appropriate for that particular patient who needed a primary care physician for their medical care. )

9. The way my professional organizations were practicing social eugenics with my dues and in my name.

10. Frank embarassment (see my post on this blog from last week for more) about what some of my professional colleagues were doing - refusing to see Medicaid patients they were assigned on call from the hospital, lack of follow up and more and more money making procedures (admittedly due to third party pressure) with less and less patient care. The games with consults vs. E&M, insisting that the FP admit and do the non-paying scut work, but the consultant gets paid for high-dollar procedures, hearing that "you need to follow-up with your Primary Care Provider" on discharge.

11.The docs "supervising" clinics with unsupervised NP and PA's.

12. Medicaid patients whose official PCP, according to the State of Texas - printed on their card, for pity's sake - was a clinic, not even one of the "providers" listed in no, 11.

Humans are patented

Today's Science Magazine reports on the implications of patent law on embryonic stem cell research. (Sorry, subscription only, excerpts below.)

Somehow, there has not been much notice that the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) was awarded the patent to human embryonic stem cells in 2001.

"On 9 August 2001, U.S. President George W. Bush directed that federal funding could be used for human embryonic stem (HES) cell research, but only for the small number of ES cell lines then in existence (listed on the National Institutes of Health Stem Cell Registry) (1). In reaction to the limitations, individual states and private foundations are designating funds to support research on the much larger number of HES lines that were derived after the President's deadline. Although these funding sources sidestep the strictures of the President's order, they do not remove what may ultimately prove a more daunting barrier to progress in this field: the intellectual property rights for HES cells. This commentary describes two fundamental patents that cover HES cells in the United States and highlights their implications for HES cell research.

"What are the patents on HES cells?
Three years before the presidential directive, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Off ice (PTO) issued a broad patent claiming primate (including human) ES cells, entitled "Primate Embryonic Stem Cells" (Patent 5,843,780). On 13 March 2001, a second patent (6,200,806), with the same title but focused on HES cells, issued from a "divisional application" (2).

"These two patents have considerable consequence for HES cell research in the United States, because they have claims to ES cells themselves, not just a method of deriving them. The claims give the patent owner, the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) the legal right to exclude everyone else in the United States from making, using, selling, offering for sale, or importing any HES cells covered by the claims until 2015. The right of exclusivity is rooted in the U.S. Constitution (3) and was intended to benefit society by encouraging innovation while discouraging secrecy on the part of inventors."

. . .

"How do fundamental HES cell patents affect scientific research?
Although many patent holders choose to license others to practice the patented invention in exchange for royalties, in the United States, licensing is not compulsory; patent holders can choose to license on their own terms or not to license at all. Because
WARF controls the rights to HES cells, researchers
who wish to use these cells must be aware of their obligations to the patent owners under U.S. law. The NIH took steps to engage WARF’s cooperation shortly after the presidential announcement, signing a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with WARF. The NIH retains rights to the 1998 (-780) patent, because
the work was supported by federal grants (12).
This MOU gave researchers employed by the
NIH, the Food and Drug Administration, and
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
a license to use HES cells for research. Also,
WARF agreed that it would not impose more
restrictive terms for any other not-for-profit
institutions. In early 2002, the NIH made similar
MOU agreements with other groups that had
made lines that were eligible for funding,
including the University of California at
San Francisco, Mizmedi (Korea), BresaGen
(Australia), Technion (Israel), Cellartis (Sweden),
and ES Cell International (Singapore). These
institutions received Infrastructure grants from
the NIH of about $200,000 to $500,000 a year
(13) to facilitate the distribution of their own
HES cell lines under a license from WARF, and
were limited by the MOU to charge no more
than $5000 (or $6000 for foreign shipping to the
United States) per cell line.

"Currently, WARF requires a license agreement
for distribution of any HES cell lines in
the United States, whether or not they are on
the NIH registry. The Harvard HES cell material
transfer agreement (MTA) (14), for example,
requires that the recipient of their cell
lines acknowledges WARF’s patent rights.
Only the institutions that have MOUs with the
NIH have price regulations; other suppliers of
HES cells can charge as much or as little as
they wish for the cells. Harvard charges nothing
for its lines. However, because the WARF
patents are only valid in the United States,
non–U.S.-based HES researchers do not need
a license unless they import the cells into the
United States."

Pets, viruses, and Big Brother

The National Animal Identification System is coming out from under the radar (is that almost a pun? Sorry.) At least for those of us involved in our County Republican Conventions - the resolutions are being submitted include opposition to the law.

From the US Department of Agriculture website concerning NAIS:

As part of its ongoing efforts to safeguard U.S. animal health, USDA initiated the implementation of the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) in 2004. NAIS is a cooperative State-Federal-industry partnership to standardize and expand animal identification programs and practices to all livestock species and poultry. NAIS is being developed through the integration of three components—premises identification, animal identification, and animal tracking. The long-term goal of the NAIS is to provide animal health officials with the capability to identify all livestock and premises that have had direct contact with a disease of concern within 48 hours after discovery.

NAIS is currently a voluntary program. To ensure the participation requirements of NAIS not only provide the results necessary to maintain the health of the national herd but also is a program that is practical for producers and all others involved in production, USDA has adopted a phased-in approach to implementation. Although the draft strategic plan references mandatory requirements in 2008 and beyond, to date no actions have been initiated by USDA to develop regulations to require participation in NAIS. APHIS will publish updates to the implementation plan as recommendations are received and evaluated by the NAIS Subcommittee and the Secretary's Advisory Committee on Foreign Animal and Poultry Diseases.

The law involves implantatin of Radio Frequency Implantable Devices, which is troublesome enough due to all sorts of small government issues as well as recent reports of viruses in the soft ware of these little markers (and denials, as well, from the Global "Association for Automatic Identification and Mobility." Umhmm. As John Longnecker says, where are *their* chips? Let Congress and all Federal bureaucrats go first).

In addition, or perhaps primarily, the law requires the registration of all "premises" where animals are kept.

Will the regulatory bureaucrats require me to register my koi pond and mark the fish that live in them? Will I be responsible for the raccoons, nutria, squirrels and billions of wild birds, frogs, and snakes that visit?

Where shall I post the certificate of registration? Or will I need another little RFID somewhere on the premises - in my yard and house - notifying Big Brother that I'm in compliance?

I believe that I understand some of the public health - and perhaps, the national security - issues that are behind this law. After all, the Bird Flu Panicdemic (sic, should I tradmark that? Ok, tradmarked) has spread incredibly fast. However, because of all those wild birds, amphibians, reptiles and mammals that do exist, it doesn't seem that just knowing that I have a pet budgie is going to make a whole lot of difference in saving (human) lives.

There is a case to be made for regulation of commercial production and housing of animals. There is a definite concern about transportation of animals and the Feds have the jurisdiction - and duty - to at least be aware of who is moving what.

But they don't need to know that I have a pet unless there is a "clear and present danger."

There are very real concerns that genetically modified crops are spreading their (modified) DNA via pollen flying all over the place (cool info, here), with unknown consequences to the future micro- and macro-environment. And with the information last week that our transportation system is not secure, adding layers of markers and permits - and taxes in the form of fees to pay for more bureaucrats and civil servants - is not the first priority I'd pick.

New addition to page

I'm going to try posting the daily on-line cartoon by Chris Muir, "Day by Day." I don't agree with every little thing in the cartoon, and I guess it's a bit political, but for some reason I enjoy it and identify with the characters. Maybe you will, too.

But, if it gets too messy (in any of the ways that things can get messy), I'll have to remove the tag.

Zogby poll: abortion can kill politicians , too

It seems that current events have "galvanized undecided voters into the pro-life camp."

Zogby poll from early this month, results published today show that there is much more common ground in support of limitations on abortion than the mainstream media would want you to know.

The authors don't mention that South Dakota passed their ban on abortions except to save the life of the mother the week before. The "galvanization" is blamed on Supreme Court confirmation hearings. But, I'd expect that the ban would "galvanize" a few people, too. Since this poll was conducted March 10-14, and the
Governor signed the bill into law about the 6th of March, we can assume that these results reflect any changes due to the ban.
Zogby polled 30,000 plus and estimate that the results are accurate to within 0.6%. 42% of respondents say they will vote for a Democrat this fall, while 40% plan to vote for a Republican candidate for their Federal Congressman. And yet, 45% do not believe that a right to abortion is in the Constitution and 46% believe that it is.

From the article:

"There is absolutely no way a presidential or a congressional candidate running for office can grow their base if they insist on championing the abortion issue," Mr. O'Leary said. The poll found a majority of respondents on 16 of the 20 questions took an anti-abortion position, including:


- Parental notification laws that were recently upheld by the Supreme
Court (55% support for girls 18 yrs. & younger; 69% for girls 16 yrs.
old & younger; only 36% and 23% disagree respectively)

- Abortion ends a human life (59% agree; 29% disagree)

- The prohibition of federal funds for abortions abroad (69% agree with
the prohibition; 21% disagree)

- Abortion because of the sex of the fetus (86% agree should be illegal;
10% disagree should be illegal)

- Requiring insurance plans to cover abortions where the life of the
mother is not endangered (56% disagree with such a requirement; 12%
agree)

- When life begins (50% believe it begins at conception; 19% believe life
begins at birth)

- A new federal partial-birth abortion bill (50% want to see another
bill; 39% don't want to see another bill)

- Requiring counseling about a mother's options before undergoing an
abortion (55% agree with such a counseling requirement; 37% disagree)

- A 24-hour waiting period (56% agree with waiting period; 37% disagree)

- Federal & state financing of abortions for poor women (51% disagree
with financing; 37% disagree)

- Laws that charge a person who kills a pregnant woman with two murders
(64% agree with such laws; 23% disagree)

The poll results suggest a shift in the electorate away from abortion rights over the past decade, Mr. O'Leary said. They also suggest that congressional Democrats who champion abortion rights could lose as much as 20 percent support from the electorate.

Thanks to Jivin Jehosaphat over at Pro-life Blogs for the lead.

What about miscarriage?

Again and again we must repeat that intentional elective abortion is the intervention to *cause* death, without medical necessity.

A common pro-abortion argument is that no one cares about miscarriages, so we must not really care about the unborn. If all this fuss and bother meant anything, we'd be working just as hard at preventing miscarriage as we do at preventing death due to other causes in "real children."

Of course, every child is a "real child." But, as one of my instructors who is a Christian ethicist puts it, the burden (pain and suffering) can be so great that there is no way to bear it. How do you relieve suffering if there is and never will be an ability to understand it? Or even when the cortical "wiring" is not there to mediate and mask it, as in a more mature child?

The welfare of each child is urgent. There's no doubt about that.

With current techniques and medicine, intervening in cases of severe chromosomal defects is more akin to keeping someone on ventilator and pacemaker after total brain death. The person has ceased to function as an organism. Resuscitation is needed or the care is futile. In these cases, non-intervention is the best "action."

We routinely treat women who tend to have repeat miscarriages with progesterone. There are techniques for cervical "stitches" to prevent women with weak or irritable openings to their wombs. Serial ultrasound is used to track and verify early pregnancy vs. "blighted ovum" and tubal pregnancy. Each of these are equivalent to vaccines and antibiotics we use for formerly devastating childhood diseases.

Researchers are working on an "artificial womb." More than likely, others are working on ways to correct trisomy, fragile X, and all of the other chromosomal defects. Unfortunately, the notion that children aren't children until we feel that they are "persons" permeates science training and research.

There is a discussion about the subject of abortion vs. treating as a result of prenatal testing at The Center for Bioethics and Culture. See "Common Ground" on that page.

Most of the statistics we read in the mainstream media concerning injury due to abortion are questionable. Even the CDC is aware that approximately 12% of abortions are never reported

Studies such as Fergusson's out of New Zealand and recent news out of Finland showing harm from and after abortion are met with disbelief, silence and are difficult to publish in the first place.

Hastings BIOETHICSFORUM Comments on my Comments

The Hastings Report posted my entire response to Dr. Lindemann's opinion on the South Dakota legislation banning abortion except to save the life of the mother, along with her responses to me.

Please note, I don't equate women who don't want to be mothers with Ted Bundy (or Andrea Yates, although Dr. Lindemann did not comment on that possibility). I equate anyone who would kill another human being and justify it by redefining human beings according to their feelings and circumstances with Ted Bundy and a lot of other serial and/or mass killers of humans. (Can't call it "murder" because of the redefinition, above.)

I would like to read a discussion as to the difference between Andrea Yates' killing her infant and toddler - who weren't persons by so many modern ethicists' definitions - and a late term or even 2nd trimester abortion. (And then, we can move by increments back to fertilization.)

The older children could understand what was happening. They could experience fear of death and harm and relate it to their mother's actions and communicate their fears to her and others. However, in the eyes of so many ethicists and pain specialists, the younger children wouldn't have even been able to demonstrate pain as in "a subjective sensory and emotional experience that requires the presence of consciousness to permit recognition of a stimulus as unpleasant." (JAMA, quoted by me back in August, 2005.

It is time to recognize that when enough independent and widely separated observers make the same observations and note the same data, we come as close to "facts" as we're going to get. It is a fact that each individual life begins at the moment when there is a recognizible organism. Usually, that's when the sperm penetrates the zona pellucida and the zygote's metabolism initiates the processes leading up to mitosis. Sometimes in nature, the individual life is actually divided and twins, triplets or quadruplets develop, but their lives began at fertilization, too.

For those of you who clicked over here before I finished this correction, sorry for the ugly double posts. I'm a physician, not a techie. But I try and, as a result, I learn something new. Often.

Robert P. George and Eric Cohen on Korean (and US) cloning scandal

On the day the we learn that the Korean veterinarian, Hwang Wu Suk, has been fired and is solely to blame for falsifying data and coercing women to undergo oocyte donation, Robert P. George and Eric Cohen on the National Review OnLine, give us an informative report on the scandal and its effects in science and the nations of Korea and the US:

Of course, the scientists seeking to sell embryonic-stem-cell research hardly rely on reason alone to make their public appeal. They rely instead on a potent combination of celebrity and pathos, with 30-second television commercial spots promising to make the lame walk again and testimony from actors like the late Christopher Reeve and Michael J. Fox. To advance their cause, they have set aside the rigorous skepticism and high empirical standards that are the bedrock of responsible science. Political utility is now among the criteria for publication.

To this end, Science magazine “fast-tracked” the Huang cloning papers in order to send a message to American policymakers: South Korea is advancing, America is falling behind, all because of the Bush policy on embryonic-stem-cell funding

Be sure and read the rest of the piece!
(Thanks to Dr. Dianne N. Irving and Wesley Smith for the leads.)

Another religiously biased op-ed

The Atlantic Journal Constitution published an editorial (free registration required) today, by C. Joshua Villenes that implies that the only reason to oppose abortion is a misguided and mistaken religious belief. He repeats many of the fallacies that we've read before and answered before.

Here's an excerpt:

Those who seek to outlaw abortion often use the rhetoric of "protecting the most vulnerable and helpless" in our communities. Many of them are Christians who see their opposition to abortion rights as inextricably linked with their faith and their understanding of Christian ethics. After all, wouldn't a God of love and life want us to protect life wherever we found it?

If only it were that simple.

In practice, there are other questions we must ask. Does a God of love and life ever support war? Does such a God understand that some innocent civilians will die when we fight to protect our freedoms? In other words, does God approve when we make the decision to kill other people to protect our quality of life? What about when we kill to prevent genocide? Does God have a holy balancing scale that weighs intangibles like "intent" and "the greater good" or one that compares the number of innocent lives lost against the number of innocent lives saved?

We do not know. For every Christian with a "God Bless Our Troops" sticker on their bumper there is another with "Who Would Jesus Bomb?" on their rear windshield.

If my experience as a pastor is any indication, it is unlikely that the driver of either car would be making their point from the kind of complex theological arguments I learned in seminary. In practice, our upbringings, our biases and our circumstances have much more to do with what we believe God thinks; and we are often inconsistent.

How else could we spend millions of dollars to oppose abortion — despite no clear biblical argument for or against it — and ignore the overwhelming number of biblical texts that explicitly command us to care for the poor?

For the vast majority of Christians, it is not about consistency — it is about convenience. Even those of us who speak passionately about protecting the weak often forget that our willingness to purchase cheap goods produced by exploited workers sentences children to poverty, disease, violence and death. The cars that we drive, the food that we allow to be marketed to children, the tax breaks we support or oppose, they all have a life-or-death impact on the most vulnerable among us. It is not only in war that we make decisions to value one life over another. Consciously or not, we do it every time we go to the supermarket.

The issue of abortion is not about whether life starts at conception. There are convincing arguments either way. The issue is which carries more weight: the life that may be in the embryo, or the life and needs of the woman in whose body that embryo was conceived?

After spending time in women's health clinics, I have come to realize that the "most vulnerable and helpless" who need our active protection are the women and couples who are faced with the agonizingly difficult decision to terminate a pregnancy. . .

Yes, we are inconsistent and we do not all have the sophisticated education that Mr. Villenes is working toward. But, we can look at pictures and know when life begins. (And I'm convinced that capitalism is undermining poverty, even where human rights violations such as child labor and abortion are occuring.)

The advocacy for abortion is harmful to women and the children they do have, as well as killing at least one member of our species. The very fact that humans are inconsistent and not as smart as Mr. Villenes should lend some doubt as to our ability to weigh all the good, now and in the future, of our children and find any convincing evidence that intentionally causing some of us to die before birth is "for the greater good." Abortion does not replace or supplement caring for the weak, the disabled, the poor or those who "know not what they do."

I wrote and sent both a letter to the editor and an editorial to the AJC and Mr. Villenes. I hope that they will read the non-religious arguments in the email, on this site and on others, including the opinions of such groups as “Feminists for Life”, “ “Libertarians for Life” , “The Compleat Heretic”, “ProLife Alliance for Gays and Lesbians” and “Atheist and Agnostic Prolife League.”

And, rather than harming women by assisting them to "choose" between killing their children and a hoped for future, perhaps Mr. Villenes could give his time and money to relieve the pressures that make abortion seem necessary: Teach abstinence in the schools. Teach the benefits of abstinence, monogamy and non-abortifacient contraception in his church. Make sure the local food bank is full and help provide homes and furnishings for mothers and their children during and after pregnancy. Send money to missionaries who preach to - and feed - child laborers, rather than support organizations that advocate forced abortions, such as the UNFPA. (Here's Mr. Villenes name on a .pdf letter from "Religious Leaders" and a .doc letter from "American Humanist.org.")

He could even babysit! With or without his clerical collar and degree.

"Death With Dignity" for everyone

Okay, just everyone who wants to kill themselves with the help of a doctor.
Pat Wray, an Oregonian outdoor reporter, has written a column praising his State for aiding people who want to kill themselves. And he believes the option should be available - with medical help and counseling, of course - for any adult who wants it. Even "healthy people" in their 20's.

He uses the old "they're going to do it any way, so it should be safe, legal and rare." He gets a good kick against "religious hardliners," too.

How safe can suicide be? And, how much religious bigotry do we pro-life have to endure?

I'm tempted to quote Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle in their political Science Fiction novel, Oath of Fealty: "Think of it as evolution in action."

It's just that I think these people breed before they kill themselves. And that the people who advocate suicide for others - especially the religious bigots who have to call the rest of us "fanatics," "right wing," and "hardliners" tend to be elitists who don't follow their own advice. Possibly because they really do not believe that anything is better, after suicide or any other kind of death.

Best op-ed on "Male Roe v. Wade"

Renew America's Steve Kellmer has written about Matt Dubay and his suit claiming that he should be able to "opt out" on being a father that is incredibly rich in thought and valid points. Please take a few minutes to read Kellmer's entire discussion, which includes

How can he have responsibilities towards a fertilized egg that doesn't even exist until hours after he has withdrawn from the woman, withdrawn from the bedroom, gotten dressed and gone home to wash his car? Conception happens hours, sometimes days, after having sex.

The pro-choice movement has been telling us (and continues to tell us) that there is no child at conception. If the "father" has never even been near the "mother" since they had sex hours or even days before fertilization, then how can he be held responsible?

We know that I believe that men become fathers and women become mothers at fertilization, whether in vitro or in vivo. Pointing out the inconsistencies of the pro-abortion side worked when we taught about partial birth and late term abortion. Mr. Dubay just gave us another, very strong illustration about the lack of logic in holding that parenthood or personhood develops over time.

The "yuck factor"

Imagine a source of hematopoietic - bloodline- stem cells that is constantly renewing for most of a persn's life, easily becomes cardiac cells, has a higher proportion of stem cells - up to 30 times - the number found in bone marrow, is available in 2 and 3 tablespoon amounts, uh, periodically, and "is going to be thrown away, anyway."

But it makes everyone I know go "yuck." (See "You found stem cells WHERE?" by Michael Fumento) Much, much more reliably than when I mention embryonic or "purified neural fetal stem cells." Even I hesitated to write about it on my blog.

I'm talking about the announcement this week reporting the discovery of stem cells from menstrual blood, or the uterine lining which produces the menstrual blood. There is a very good, matter of fact article in Medical News Today that discusses both these cells and umbilical cord mesenchymal cells and their potential to become therapy for heart disease. The researchers found that the stem cells from both sources were easily induced to become cardiomyocytes or heart cells, that they contracted in unison, and that there were actually electrical signals between the cells.(Readers of this blog were expecting this announcement.)

This is cutting edge, but soon to be routine, medical research and therapy available, today. It is not the black magic that is being mysteriously conjured behind the curtain unfulfilled and unsubstantiated potential benefits from embryonic stem cells.

There is no exploitation of women. In fact, women may benefit from some hot-shot researcher's efforts to collect the samples more efficiently and hygenically. I do worry that there may be a push for "vacuum extraction," with its history of and potential for early abortion. But I would think that the possibility of "contamination" by the presence of an embryo - or for that matter, an infection - would lead the collectors to prefer abstinent women.

But why is the reaction to these stem cells so much more negative than all the hype about cloning over the last few years? We can discuss clone and kill in public, all day. Even CBS' 60 Minutes discusses the destruction disaggregation of embryos and fetal humans for the treatment of disease, without so much as a blush.

But, go to Google News and type in "menstrual stem cells." The result is 10 articles as of this writing. 36 if you expand to include the duplicates.

Now, search for "embryonic stem cells." There are 99 articles cited in the last two days - some of them concerning the menstrual cells. But, there are over 1500 citations in the last 30 days on the embryonic stem cells.

(Note that the exciting news that umbilical cord blood contains stem cells that so easily become cardiac cells receives even less attention than the cells from the uterine lining. It may have something to do with the fact that the latter articles can be accompanied by pictures of pretty young women, to demonstrate the source. Who would want to see a new born baby, a pregnant woman?)

Traditionally, the monthly period or bleeding of a woman has been treated as shameful and "unclean," an idea that is strongly supported by the Mosaic law. (It will be interesting to see how Jewish ethicists - and Jehovah's Witnesses - deal with the status of these stem cells. Perhaps if the cells are collected by vacuum extraction, they will not be "unclean.")

I don't claim to be a prophet, but I don't think G-d would mind if, from now on every conversation about stem cells includes an assertive reminder of the promise of menstrual blood stem cells.

(The press release from AROWS ought to be interesting, too! They're being uncharacteristically quiet. I hope it's not to late for them. To comment, I mean.)

Feel like a human?

Hilde Lindemann, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Michigan State University, was kind enough to send me a copy of her note to a colleague about my comments on her article in the Hastings Center Report’s Bioethics Forum in which she calls the South Dakota law banning all abortions except to save the life of the mother “misogynistic.” I questioned Dr. Lindemann’s use of the term “specific performance,” since the woman is being prevented from an act of intervention and from recruiting others to act, rather than being forced to act.

Hilde Lindemann wrote:
“This is a good question as well. I checked with a lawyer who thought the legal argument was sound, though I'm sure there could be other ways of looking at it. The intentional act that is not being done here, as I see it, isn't the initiation of an abortion; rather, it's the sustaining of the pregnancy. That's why I tried so hard to motivate the idea that human pregnancies are purposive activities, not passive states.”

(Emphasis mine)

Well then, since there "could be other ways to look at it," why not choose the non-violent, non-destructive and non-interventionist way that will preserve the life of the child as long as that life is not a threat to his or her mother's life? And since the author has made the accusation of misogyny, I'd like to remind her that there is a 52% chance that the child in each human pregnancy is a female child.

However, the basic argument does not stand. The fact of human biology and developmental embryology in particular is that pregnancy is no more an "intentional act of sustaining" than ovulation or any other physiological phase of the menstrual or life cycle. The medical and surgical technology to prevent conception predate and may require less intervention that the act of abortion. They certainly do not require the level or complexity of intention that a medical or surgical abortion involves.

Once fertilization occurs in vivo, no intentional act is necessary on the woman's part for the pregnancy to continue. On the contrary, the woman must intentionally act if she does not choose to sustain the pregnancy. In the example Lindemann gives of her daughter's "work" to sustain her pregnancy and to control high blood pressure and gestational diabetes is equally - if not more so - beneficial to the mother as it is to the child.

In the case of elective abortion as prohibited by the South Dakota law, the intervention forbidden or penalized is the participation of regulated medical professionals, medicines, and instruments with the specific intention to abort the child. As far as the actual procedure required, there would be no difference whether the woman or a third party such as the State chooses that this child is not to be born.

In order to “motivate the idea that human pregnancies are purposive activities and not passive states,” Dr. Lindemann must redefine “mother” as well as “person.” She ignores common terminology used in biology, law and every day life. We are asked to agree that a woman is not a mother until she feels like it and that the embryonic, fetal, and even neonatal human is not a person until he or she is "called into being."

One of the readers at LifeEthics.org, "j2," correctly observed after reading Lindemann’s essay that, "A mother in her world must give birth twice: once to herself and once to her perfectible child." (spelling edited)

Indeed, if personhood is determined by arbitrary measures such as each individual’s feelings about an individual human life, there is no security of individual “choice.” If the power to end human life belongs to anyone in position to define the personhood of that human, accusations of misogyny or any other sort of discrimination become irrelevant.

Of course the idea that Lindemann tries so hard to "motivate" not only requires her great effort to bring us to “a revised understanding of what pregnancy is,” but an esoteric redefinition of "personhood" that is not consistent with the legal precedent she defends - Roe v. Wade – and its benchmark of personhood beginning at birth.

Dr. Lindemann’s "personhood" would vary according to individual feelings without tangible qualifications and criteria, becoming even more arbitrary and transient than variations dependent on politics, religion, and tradition, rather than species. The status of each human life in this scenario is completely severed from common empirical observations and the predictions that we make from those observations in order to participate in science, law and society. We’ve moved beyond abortion to infanticide to feelings that someone is a person and deserving of protection from . . . whatever.

Dr. Lindemann says this “view may be wrong, but there are no publicly available means of showing that it is wrong.” If Dr. Lindemann is correct, we owe restitution to Andrea Yates and even Ted Bundy, not to mention all the men and women who were able to win others to share their particular feelings about personhood long enough to commit pogroms, racial cleansing, killing fields, purges, genocide and jihads. Or not, depending on how we feel.

Hands Off Our Ovaries!!

I love the irony of the adoption for good of the slogan mis-used for 40 years by the most militant pro-abortion activists.We must call for serious discussion and action by the women of the world, since our daughters and sisters - both those of today and of the future - are at risk.

The harvesting of eggs for embyronic research and attempts - so far at least, failed attempts - at cloning is with out a doubt the exploitation of women. The risk to each woman in each cycle of induction is permanent damage to the reproductive organs, infertility and death. The donation of oocytes should be considered on a par with paired-organ donation. Except in very limited cases for women who are unable to have their own children or who wish to help a sister or other close relative, there can be no excuse and no tolerance for inducing women to undergo the hormonal manipulation and surgical procedure necessary to produce and collect the oocytes for altruistic or economic reasons.

This is just one more example of the little boys in their labs who, from the beginning of recorded history have insisted on taking everything apart just to see how it works and leaving the women in their lives to sweep up the bits and pieces they have left over when they try to put it back together again. We should not let our sisters be the victims of their own nurturing and guilt. Women should band together while the exploitation is still at an embryonic stage.


Women on both sides of the abortion issue agree. Besides Diane Beeson, a Professor of Sociology at the California State University, East Bay, Josephine Quintavalle on behalf of Comment on Reproductive Ethics and Jennifer Lahl, President of Every Woman First, two Italian Feminists, Paola Tavella and Alessandra Di Pietro, authors of "Untamed Mothers-Against Technorape of the Female Body", who are quoted as saying,

"We believe that current biopolitics are separating men and women from natural reproduction and are robbing women of their biological tissues for experimental technoscience. We will fight together with other feminists for the freedom of women and the welfare of future generations."

the article continues with this from Ms. Quintavalle,

"None of these issues has been adequately addressed by the stem cell scientists eager to get their hands on women's eggs and ovaries. And all for scientific research which still remains in the realm of hypothetical benefit."

A petition and additional information is at
http://www.handsoffourovaries.com

Is there room for giggling in the Big Tote Bag of Bioethics?
Though the topic is serious and not a matter for jokes, the irony (and the very mention of "technorape") makes me wish I had thought of using the slogan for the perpetually flushed E.D. ("Executive Director," not that other term) of AROWS (Age-Related Ovarian Wasting Syndrome), the other Women's Bioethics Project which is composed of "first wives and mothers who know where the pill bottles are hidden and what each is for!"

Superb comment on abortion advocate's column

I wish I could write like this, from reader, J2:
"A mother in her world must give birth twice: once to herself and once to her perfectable child."

Please click here to read the entire comment.

And, J2, please consider sending this on to Ms. Lindemann.

Way too much personal information

I'm going to go out on a limb and post the story I just told online, elsewhere. It's more personal than bioethics, but maybe it will help someone else. At the end I'll give a couple of secrets for surviving in the medical world when you don't have the usual disease or the usual course for your disease.

My mother has been very sick over the last 2 years with a wild and crazy diagnosis of thymic carcinoma followed by a persistent paraneoplastic syndrome. If she hadn't had one daughter who's an RN and one who's an obsessive-compulsive (at least when it comes to my Moma) Family doc, I don't think -- no, I'm pretty sure she wouldn't have survived. (She's doing great, right now.)

Thymic carcinoma is very rare, with only a few cases diagnosed in the world each year. (Only 20 cases were seen at the Mayo clinic in a 75 year history according to this article.) The body will make antibodies against the tumor and those antibodies can attack the muscles, nerves, and the chemicals that carry signals between the muscles and the nerves. Patients may become weak or have pain that can't normally be explained by neurotomes (groups of related nerves) or muscle groups. They may even have brain involvement and become delirious or "out of their heads." The effect of the antibodies is called paraneoplastic syndrome and may not go away even in the rare cases where the tumor is completely removed and there are no signs of persistent cancer. Sometimes the paraneoplastic syndrome will show up before the cancer can be detected. And sometimes the syndrome will cause life-threatening complications such as loss of sympathetic nervous control (so blood pressure goes up and down to a dangerous degree) and respiratory crises (the lungs are affected, mimicking pneumonia) long after the cancer is "cured."

We had to repeatedly go through the "No, she never smoked." And, "Yes, she's a 'full code.'" And "No, it's not Parkinson's or Alzheimer's, it's a syndrome similar to atypical myasthenia gravis because of her tumor." And, "She worked up to 2 weeks before her surgery and used tylenol for pain before that." And "NO it's not lung cancer no matter what the pathology report says - it's in her THYMUS, so it's THYMIC carcinoma, even if it's squamous cell, small cell type." And -- worst of all -- "Please put her back on the pyridostigmine and steroids so she can roll over in bed and maybe even sit up again, like last week."

And the doctors, with the one exception of the excellent oncologist, never called me back - even though they knew I am a fellow physician. They never called my sister or my daddy, either. Once, I sat in Moma's long-time family doctor's office, waiting for the doctor or the advanced nurse practitioner to come out to speak to me for over 20 minutes. I knew they knew I was there and Moma and Daddy had given everyone written permission to speak to me and my sister, when Moma first got sick. But, no luck. Finally, the length of time seemed embarassing. I (very carefully and legibly) wrote a message covering my concerns and left. They never called me, they didn't even call my Daddy, and I still don't know why.

Ok. Doctors are human. We can't think of or do everything. Often the mistakes are procedural or just due to the inefficiency of the system. And, I know that doctors have more than one patient, that it's always good not to be the biggest emergency in the office.

(Oh, and before I forget - someone needs to say it: Doctors make rounds in the morning and after work. We often skip lunch or eat at our desks in order to review labs and tests or run back to the hospital. And on our "afternoon off," we have to make manditory committee meetings at the hospital or go to the nursing home. When I was doing full family practice, I was on 4 hospital and Emergency room call lists at one hospital - obstetrics, new born, ICU, and general.)

Moma did get revenge on one of the Neurologists she saw in the hospital. It was a Saturday, 4 days after the 2004 election, 2 days after her surgery to remove the thymic carcinoma and one of the times her pyridostigmine was wearing off. She was very weak and her usual benign essential tremor was at its worst and her face muscles were droopy.
But, this was not one of the times the syndrome affected her thinking.
The doctor rounding that day was the 2nd neurologist she had seen in the hospital, and he began putting her through the tests that all the other neurologists do: run the heel of your right foot down your left shin, touch your nose, do you know what day it is, etc. He declared that he was an expert in "Movement disorders" and trained at Harvard (when Moma tells this story, she says, "Hahhvahhd.") He said she did not have myasthenia gravis, it was obviously Parkinson's.

Ignoring my interjection that she had had a thymic carcinoma removed 2 days before (He knew I am an FP), he asked Moma to name as many animals as she could.
Moma, the proud Republican woman who voted early on her way to her first visit to the Cardio-Thoracic surgeon 3 weeks ago, just in case, answered, "Horses and cows, dogs and cats, lions and bears and tigers, elephants, jackasses, and Democrats."
At least she didn't say " and Yankees."

I have since explained to Moma that it's really not a good idea to irritate Neurologists.

It's a good thing she didn't say "Zebras." Because in medical school every student makes a wild diagnosis and is taught the cliche' that, "If you hear hoofbeats in Texas, it's probably horses, not zebras."

But, dog-gone it, sometimes it's Zebras! Even in Texas. And patients shouldn't have to have their own private medical consulting staff in order to survive.


As promised, here are what I believe are the secrets to obtaining good medical care and surviving a "zebra.":

1. Stay in the United States. Even with all our snafus, we have the best medical care - especially when it comes to zebras - in the world. (Moma went from diagnosis to surgery in just over a month. And that saved her life, since it is rare to find these tumors before they have spread to the lungs and even the heart and chest wall or metastasized to the liver, lungs, bone and brain.)
2. Go in to see the doctor with a list of questions on bright yellow or green paper. Do not leave until all the questions are covered or there are plans to find the answers.
3. Have your history and current medications in writing, maybe on another color of bright paper. It really does help if you bring in all the bottles of medicines, vitamins and supplements you are taking.
4. Don't irritate neurologists or psychiatrists. Trust me, you don't want to know why.
3. The best and most important strategy of all is to find a good nurse that you like. Feed her chocolate. Send her flowers and cards on her birthday. And ask *her* for help with the doctor.

A clear (but erroneous) argument against abortion bans

The Hastings Center has a new blog which contains a piece by Hilde Lindemann which rightly calls last week's South Dakota legislation banning most abortions a "direct attack on Roe v. Wade." The author says that this law ignores the undue gender inequality of burden on the mother and enforces "specific performance" on the pregnant woman.

I'm not a lawyer, just a family doctor. However, doesn't the use of this doctrine of law involve penalties or the positive forcing of an intentional act that has been promised but is not being done? The prohibition *against the initiation* of an intentional act by a third party by abortion doesn't seem to quite fit.

Elitist whining on behalf of "Joe Scientist's" funding

Glenn McGee, the editor of The American Journal of Bioethics, a professor of Medical Ethics at Albany (New York) Medical School, and the blogger at blog.bioethics.net, has a column at The Scientist that typifies bioethic reasoning. It seems that scientists have a right to our tax dollars as seed money for whatever enterprise they want to start.

Dr. McGee forgets that "the people" elect the Legislature and the Executive Branch to make decisions on our behalf. Many of those decisions disperse tax funds that are taken from our salaries.

Why doesn't Dr. McGee complain that more money is not spent in the private sector or donated by philanthropists and others with a particular interest in a given realm of research? Instead, he wants the IRS to take more of your money for "Joe Scientist's" benefit. We all know that the government does not profit from patents that are the result of research, but he believes that you and I owe Joe a living, no matter what Joe wants to do. (I'd prefer to cut more funding from all levels of government. The Federal level is involved in too many areas and should stick with defense, transportation, and being the Court of last resort, in my humble opinion. Leave the rest to private associations and the States.)

Be sure and take a look at the comments at the blog.bioethics.net posting of part of the column. And don't forget that the posts are censored.

Neurologist on medical ethics now and later

Dr. Shari deSilva has posted an insightful article concerning the future of neurology, medicine, conscience and ethics on her blog, "Clueless Christian." She says that she has not seen a single new baby with Downs' Syndrome in 2 years, despite being the only neurologist who treats children for 300 miles. Dr. deSilva has observed the increasing pressure on medical "professionals" to act against their consciences, to the harm of patients and our profession. And she is witnessing the discussion of the potential role of neurologists in determining who will live and who will die at the hands - at least remotely by "assistance" - of her fellow physicians.

The old definition of "profession" included the understanding that judgement and ethics were an integral part of the discipline. Especially in medicine, the possession of special knowledge and access to situations and tools that no one else is allowed was assumed to carry with it the duty to assess the "rightness" of actions. Has it come to the point that a professional - or anyone, including the clerk at the pharmacy - can become the slave to the wants, rather than the needs, of the public?

I'm afraid that "because we can" and "because it's legal" are the new ethics that have replaced, "First, do no harm."

I won't perform an act designed and intended to use medicine and my medical knowledge and skills to take the life of another human being, no matter how young, no matter how old and no matter that "it's my job" or "it's legal." Most definitely not because of "limited funds and resources" or "the good of the many outweigh the good of the few."

I am glad that Dr. deSilva has joined in the fight against the anti-ethics that has resulted in blatant euthanasia, often involuntary, in the Netherlands and which is attempting to spread in this country. The "right to privacy" in the form of contraception for married couples spread to the "right" to have a doctor (and pharmacist) prescribe, then to the right to have the State protect abortion facilities and institutionalize and regulate those killings. Pressure is on to have more - all - doctors trained to perform abortions to increase access to and further force doctors to perform and refer. Oregon has legalized "physician assisted suicide" and it's only a matter of time until that "right" spreads to more states and from there, to having the "right" to deadly prescriptions from any doctor who is giving care to the patient who wants to control the time of his death.

And, I'm afraid that there are indeed rumblings among the "medical professionals" that too much money is spent on Medicaid and Medicaid for nursing homes and the elderly and disabled at all ages. There are those who assume - and approve - that involuntary euthanasia, rather than necessary triage and palliative care, went on in New Orleans after Katrina as well as in some Hospice care all over the country. And other neurologists aren't nearly as ethical as Dr. deSilva and are praised for their discrimination between "persons" and humans.

There is sometimes a fine line between causing death - which is always unethical - and allowing death - which sometimes is ethical. That is why you need professionals with consciences.

Wisdom (teeth) and stem cells

Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology's Research Institute has announced that a team has discovered a mesenchymal stem cell present in tooth germ cells:

Tooth germ disappears as a tooth is formed, but that of a wisdom tooth stays in the jawbone of a human until the age of 10 to 16, because wisdom teeth grow slowly.

An experiment proved that stem cells taken from wisdom tooth germ grow far more quickly than stem cells taken from bone marrow.

The team discovered that the tooth germ can be turned into bone, nerves or liver cells by stimulating it with hormones.

The researchers have previously used stem cells taken from bone marrow to create cells of various organs, including bone and heart muscle. Bone marrow stem cells have been used successfully in the treatment of patients.

However, the new method that uses tooth germ has been shown to create cells of organs faster than the method that uses stem cells taken from bone marrow.

A rat with a liver disorder made a full recovery three weeks after it received a human tooth germ cell transplant.

(Another lead from FreeRepublic. Thanks Coleus!)

"'fetus may feel pain,’ that would be shocking to women,”

Well, by all means, don't worry their pretty little heads about it.

The patronizing pro-abortion faction of the Indiana Senate is blocking the addition of informed consent concerning the potential of pain felt by unborn children who are being killed.

Because we don't know.
And because it might shock someone.
And, besides, it's so rare.

What will the good abortionists do when the mother of a dead child discovers - to her shock and feelings of betrayal by the State - exactly that her child was her child and he or she did, indeed, feel pain?

The "dispute" is based on a specialized definition of pain that requires that the pain be anticipated, remembered, recalled and associated with the stimuli:

The International Association for the Study of Pain defines pain as 'an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage.' . . .
". . . true pain experience [develops] postnatally along with memory, anxiety and other cognitive brain functions."

In the UK, anesthesia for the child has been recommended by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists after 24 weeks, but some researchers have suggested that the anesthesia be given much earlier. The neurochemical and hormonal response of the unborn child is similar to the what we see in his mother when she is in pain. The neurophysiology is sufficient to assume pain (even by the convoluted jargon that opponents use) by 21 weeks and we know they are "definitely established" by 26 weeks.

Saletan in Wash Post: Life After Roe

From Sunday's Washington Post, William Saletan has this to say:

A Roberts-Alito-Stevens court would probably overturn Stenberg in June 2007. There's no chance it would overturn Roe, since five of the justices who reaffirmed Roe in Casey would still be on the court. But the ruling could set off a political explosion. That's what happened 17 years ago when the court, in Webster v. Reproductive Health Services , narrowed its interpretation of Roe. Justice Harry Blackmun, Roe's author, accused his colleagues of inviting legislatures to attack Roe, which he predicted "would not survive." That was enough to scare pro-choice voters and make them a decisive force in many states. Three years later, in Casey, Blackmun warned the country that he would soon have to retire, putting Roe in jeopardy.

I don't think the backlash will be as big as Mr. Saletan predicts, for the very reasons that he gives (below) and because the Internet has replaced the mainstream media as the source of information and authority for knowledge on social issues, health, and science.
Mr. Saletan, I hope you keep up the good work, but you are one of many thousands of resources and sources of information and understanding about the nature of abortion and the child abortion kills.
We can look up human development online and we know more than we did in 1973:

Roe established a right to abortion through the end of the second trimester. The latter part of that time frame has always been the most controversial. Improvements in neonatal care have made fetuses viable--capable of surviving delivery--earlier than was possible in 1973. That's why Justice O'Connor said Roe was "on a collision course with itself" and eventually led her colleagues to abandon the trimester framework. Meanwhile, sonograms and embryology have made people aware of how well developed fetuses are while still legally vulnerable to abortion. We even do surgery on fetuses now, which makes aborting them seem that much more perverse. These developments may explain, in part, why two-thirds of Americans think abortion should be illegal in the second trimester--and why anti-abortion activists targeted partial-birth abortions for legislative assault.

Another Disease Treated With Umbilical Cord Stem Cells

Buerger's Disease is a sort of auto-immune disease or inflammation of the blood vessels - think of it as a painful, alergic blistering around the smallest arteries and veins. It doesn't cause "hardening of the arteries" (with calcium in the walls) but can cause them to become clogged.

There has never been another treatment before, other than trying to get ahead of the pain at each site.

Buerger's disease is not like leukemia or many of the other diseases we've treated with umbilical cord stem cell transplants: it is not a disease of the blood or bone marrow.

After treatment with umbilical cord stem cells, this report notes that the men treated "suddenly" became pain-free and, over time, the ulcers on their skin healed. The blood vessels were found to be more open. It appears that the stem cells repaired the blood vessel walls, allowing circulation to the skin.

Just imagine if this would work for diabetic blood vessel disease!

ABSTRACT: Buerger's disease, also known as thromboangiitis obliterans, is a nonatherosclerotic, inflammatory, vasoocclusive disease. It is characterized pathologically as a panangiitis of medium and small blood vessels including both arteries and adjacent veins, especially the distal extremities, the feet and the hands. There is no curative medication or surgery for this disease. In the present studies, we transplanted human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-matched human umbilical cord blood (UCB)-derived mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) into 4 men with Buerger's disease who had already received medical treatment and surgical therapies. After the stem cell transplantation, ischemic rest pain suddenly disappeared from their affected extremities. The necrotic skin lesions were healed within 4 weeks. In the follow-up angiography, digital capillaries were increased in number and size. In addition, vascular resistance in the affected extremities, compared with the preoperative examination, was markedly decreased due to improvement of the peripheral circulation. Because an animal model of Buerger's disease is absent and also in order to understand human results, we transplanted human UCB-derived MSCs to athymic nude mice with hindlimb ischemia by femoral artery ligation. Up to 60% of the hindlimbs were salvaged in the femoral artery ligated animals. By situ hybridization, the human UCB-derived MSC was detected in the arterial walls of the ischemic hindlimb in the treated group. Therefore, it is suggested that human UCB-derived MSCs transplantation may be a new and useful therapeutic armament for Buerger's disease and other similar ischemic diseases.

More on ethics guidelines on stem cell research

Just noticed that the Hinxton panel that decided to come to a consensus on what to do with human embryos, but ignored the very nature of human embryos themselves, included Julian Savulescu. The Oxford ethics professor is the author of a piece in the British Medical Journal (sorry, subscription only) in which he stated that,

Values are important parts of our lives. But values and conscience have different roles in public and private life. They should influence discussion on what kind of health system to deliver. But they should not influence the care an individual doctor offers to his or her patient. The door to "value-driven medicine" is a door to a Pandora's box of idiosyncratic, bigoted, discriminatory medicine. Public servants must act in the public interest, not their own.

There's more quoted at blog.bioethics.net.
Salvulescu is also the author of this opinion piece, which makes a case for gender selection by abortion.

I'm happy to report that most of the letters in response to the BMJ article condemned the logic as well as the conclusions of Savulescu. But, this is not a man that I want making any sort of decisions about ethics, much less telling entire nations how to settle law.

There were a couple of edits: I couldn't seem to spell the professor's name correctly. Maybe that's a defect that he would appreciate, maybe not:

Genetic tests should be offered to couples seeking to have a child to allow them to select the child, of the possible children they could have, who will start life with the best opportunity of having the best life (subject to cost constraints)

More on redefining humans

Nancy Valko forwarded Nigel Cameron's latest op-ed, "The Truth, The Partial Truth, and Nothing But Evasions":

It's fascinating to see just what has been happening with the cloning debate. First, the pro-cloning advocates tried to neutralize an unpopular, sci-fi sounding word by adding an antidote "therapeutic." Surely, they reckoned, "therapeutic cloning" sounds OK. But the American public proved more resilient than they expected (and not as dumb); they decided that therapeutic cloning was still cloning. So the same people who had made up this deeply dishonest phrase went back to the drawing board. (Or, at least, they went back to K Street—haunt of high-priced Washington lobbyists—and tried some more focus groups.)

The results were—to be fair!—ingenious. Two bold moves were taken. First, "cloning" was redefined. No longer could it be allowed to mean what everyone once thought it meant: using the Dolly-the-sheep technology (technically called somatic cell nuclear transfer) to create an embryo. Using cloning to mean, well, cloning, would make it harder to argue the difference between cloning embryos to make babies and cloning embryos to destroy them for experiments. So cloning was redefined as "the implantation of the cloned embryo." Only implanted embryos are clones.

In fact, they're called "unfertilized blastocysts" - which is the ultimate oxymoron similar to saying "fast slow" or "flat sphere" - second only to "family planning" and "reproductive services" as disingenuous euphemisms for abortion.

Sure, it's the stuff of science fiction. In fact some of my favorite SF deals with the subject of who and what is the clone of a human. Read Bujold's Vorkosigan series about Miles and his clones, whom he and his parents decide are children of both Miles and his parents, as well as the cloning technicians.

Wesley Smith on redefining humans

Thanks to Bioethics.com (the blog for the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity), I read this editorial. (Free registration) According to his blog, Secondhand Smoke, Mr. Smith tells us that his efforts in Missouri to block a State clone and kill bill resulted in the Kansas City Star's agreeing to allow him to clarify what the bill means.

We've had a similar bill in Texas, last session. HB 1929 defines human life - or at least human cloning - as beginning at implantation. That's also the same tactic that the Hatch/Feinstein/Specter/Kennedy/Boxer/Harkin/Clinton Bill uses. See the description of the 2002 Bill at the Lasker Foundation, below. The senior Senator from Texas was once one of the proponents. But, look at this language:

Sec. 301. Prohibition on human cloning

(a) DEFINITIONS- In this section:

(1) HUMAN CLONING - The term 'human cloning' means implanting or attempting to implant the product of nuclear transplantation into a uterus or the functional equivalent of a uterus.

At that site, you can read Irving Weisman's explaination, too:

The field of nuclear transplantation to create a new embryonic stem cell line began oddly enough with the efforts to clone whole individual animals. The way it is done is to take the nucleus of any body cell, put that into an egg from an animal of the same species after you have removed the DNA or the chromosomal material from that egg, so that only genetic instruction in that egg comes from the body cell. The next step is to give it a little jolt of electricity, which activates the egg to go into the program of cell division. This can result, in a two cell, then eight cell, then sixteen cell stage of development, and so on until its about a 164 to 320 cell early pre-implantation embryo, called a blastocyst.

Now let me explain the term early pre-implantation embryo because I use it a lot. Normally when an egg is fertilized, all the events I said and all the cell divisions I said, are occurring as the egg is falling through the fallopian tubes toward the uterus. So the egg came out of the ovary, was fertilized in the fallopian tubes and as it's going through its cell division;, it's floating. It's only when it implants in the uterus that you begin the process to make a whole animal or a whole human being.

and

I think there is a very clear line and the clear line that we define in our National Academy's panel is that in reproductive cloning you have to put the blastocyst into a prepared uterus with the intent of creating a child. In nuclear transfer to produce embryonic stem cell lines, it is not the intent to do that; and all you do is extract the cells at a stage where you can make an embryonic stem cell line from it. Now, it all depends on intent. Right? Whether one intends to create an embryonic stem cell line or whether one intends to create by reproductive cloning-- a human.

CBS 60 Minutes touts embryonic stem cells, again

The February 26th CBS 60 Minutes Sunday show is the second this month which has focused exclusively on destructive, unethical embryonic and fetal stem cell trials (and their trials due to Federal funding limits). The lack of balanced reporting is obvious.

Scientists say the pace of research has been slowed down by President Bush’s 2001 ban on the use of federal money to create new lines of embryonic stem cells. Researchers need those new stem cells to expand their work, because the existing lines are at least five years old and may have been weakened over time, limiting their value. However, extracting new stem cells destroys human embryos, which the president strongly opposes.

****

"These are the cells that go to make up the heart muscle cells," Robbins explains. "They all started out as cells from embryos. With the potential to develop into any type cell."

Robbins hopes to one day inject the cells, which actually beat like a heart, into someone whose heart has suffered some kind of damage.

In theory, those cells would then replace the damaged part of the heart.

And

But there is one area of stem-cell research that is now ready for human testing and it may be the only chance that Joanna and Marcus Kerner have to save the life of their 6-year-old son, Daniel. The FDA recently approved a clinical trial using brain stem cells from fetal tissue to treat the rare and always fatal neurological disorder called Batten disease, which Daniel was diagnosed with a year and a half ago. The Kerners' doctor gave them the grim prognosis.

No one at CBS one even mentions Don Ho!

The research is reported as novel, although adult and umbilical cord research in each of these areas is ongoing and showing results. Here's my letter to the show:

Your reporters have done 2 stories in the last month concerning destructive embryonic stem cell research. The story from February 26 is most troubling, because research trials are already far enough along to prove the usefulness of ethical, non-destructive adult and umbilical cord stem cells in the very neurological problems you describe. Look into Dr. James Baumgartner's work in Houston, where they are recruiting pediatric patients for a trial of autologous bone marrow stem cell therapy.

Here's my commentary on the February 13th show.

More on fetal stem cells in treatment

First, a correction. The Forbes article concerning the treatment of Huntington's disease does have this line:

The procedure replaces striatal neurons lost to the debilitating illness with striatal neuroblasts and neural precursors obtained from embryos. These transplants grow to form mature replacement cells.

I assume that I made a mistake.

There is an earlier, 2000, report about the trial which I believe is available by free registration at Lancet.
From that report:

Five patients with Huntington's disease, identified genetically and clinically, were selected and gave informed consent to participate in a protocol which had received ethical approval from the French National Ethics Committee.

Neurosurgical procedures have been described previously. Whole ganglionic eminences were retrieved from 7·5–9·0-week-old fetuses and transplanted as small blocks. Two grafting sessions were planned: the first on the right side of the brain, and the second on the left side 1 year later. Tissue from either one or two fetuses was prepared but, due to volume restriction, the amount of tissue implanted in each session was roughly similar—ie, equivalent to that trimmed from one fetus.

None of which is relevant to the 5 day old embryos that we normally think of as being the source of "embryonic stem cells" which are said to be harvested from "left over embryos that are going to die, anyway."
We could consider these transplants as ethically equal to the transplant of tissue from prisoners who are intentionally killed, as is reported to be common in China.