Is Korea considering a ban on cloning?

Is this a case of "It's never too late," or "closing the barn door after the horse is out?"

The South Korean National Bioethics Council is debating whether to allow the creation of embryos and the donation of oocytes (eggs).

From the JoongAng Daily

Ethics group rethinks egg questions
February 03, 2006 ㅡ The National Bioethics Committee tried yesterday to agree on the details of ethical guidelines for creating stem cells by combining the nucleus of a somatic cell with the shell of an ovum. The technique was described by Dr. Hwang Woo-suk in his now-discredited paper on patient-specific stem-cell cloning. The committee postponed any decision, though, doubtful of whether the technique should be allowed at all.
"Since Dr. Hwang's article on somatic cell transplants was proven to be fabricated, questions were raised about whether it would be realistic to write detailed clauses on a research technique that di

d not exist," said Cho Han-ik, the vice chairman of the committee.
The committee had planned to debate the details of standards for egg donations, but dropped plans to do so. "Thousands of eggs were used in the research. If we allowed the technique, researchers having trouble getting eggs in other countries might start coming to Korea, which could create problems for the protection of Korean women," he added. "We decided to discuss the fundamental question of whether to allow the research at all."
Separately, the committed voted to forbid DNA tests for Alzheimer's disease and obesity in most cases. It said those tests were not scientifically proven to be of value. Genetic tests for obesity would be banned completely, but those for Alzheimer's would be allowed for adults at a physician's request. It also added new standards for institutional scientific review boards.

The paper is also reporting that University of Pittsburg's Gerald Schatten, PhD has been summoned for questioning.

Of course, (cloning) stem cell fraud couldn't last!

Blog.bioethics.net has a guest posting by the University of Texas'self-identified "stem cell enthusiast (read that: "destructive stem cell research") John Roberts (a lawyer, not a veterinarian) that is nothing but a demonstration worthy of the Great Oz: "Don't bother to look behind the curtain! It's not necessary, because we'll find out, eventually, what's back there! Trust us we're scientists and bioethicists!"

Hey, Hwang only managed to maintain the fiction with 2 articles in Science Magazine. Which was once one of the top science journals. And he managed to do it for a year and a half. And to waste somewhere between 2000-3000 oocytes from about over a hundred women. (No one knows the exact numbers, yet. No one ever will, thanks to fabrication, poor record keeping and a purposefully wiped hard drive. The numbers and accusations change from week to week.)

And, please notice that Lawyer Roberts can barely bring himself to acknowledge what everyone else has: Hwang lied about "cloning" for embryonic stem cells. Roberts still needs to call the hypothetical process "nuclear transfer," to blur embryonic/nuclear transfer cloning/stem cells and to push for the creation of embryos for destruction and the harvest of ever more oocytes ("eggs") from more women in order to further the dream.

And, of course, it was all a dream.

I don't understand the need for this argument - or the need for more and more exploitation of women. ESC's won't ever be useful in human medicine. Cloning most certainly will never be necessary. We have "patient specific" stem cells in the patient's own body.

Perhaps, important lessons can be learned about markers, stimulating and recruiting factors from the current crude form of embyo disassembling and shotgun form of plate 'em on everything everyway we can think of. But,it would be better and more responsible to utilize animal models and focus on both adult stem cells and the local in vivo environment when and where they are found.

A Medline search yields several references to possible progenitors of beta cells in the adult or post-natal pancreas. This month, Labortatory Investigation describes mesenchymal stem cells derived from human pancreatic ductal cells. But I think the consensus is that the best hope is discovery of the factors that induce proliferation of beta cells, themselves.

Unfortunately, treating insulin-dependent diabetes will also have to deal with the patient's autoimmune response to insulin, as well as the need for increased numbers of productive beta cell islet

Feminist: cures haven’t come, but eugenic(s)...expanded.

Now we have a clear description of the truth about genetic diagnosis, prenatal screening, and abortion. It's far too likely to be the story of the near future of genetics, "regenerative medicine," and all those up and coming forms of unethical, destructive research to "improve" the human genome.

Thanks to the email list of Dianne N. Irving, Ph.D. (a human embryologist and ethicist), here's an interview at the Center for Bioethics and Culture (watch out for the virtual hostess - or could she be "docent")), between the founder of the CBC, Jennifer Lahl, and M.L. Tina Stevens and Diane Beeson.


From Beeson:

When I was younger I believed the confident predictions of the geneticists that selective abortion was merely a temporary solution; within a few years we would have cures for all these conditions and we would not be practicing prenatal eugenics. The fact is the cures haven’t come, but the eugenic functions of reproductive genetics have expanded. For example, I learned years ago that we could eliminate most neural tube defects by addressing folic acid (a B vitamin) deficiencies in women. We chose instead to put our resources into massive prenatal screening programs throughout the country.

Thank you, Ms. Beeson.

Once more, destructive embryo research disappoints

Thanks to a post at FreeRepublic.com, I was alerted to this article in Scientific American on the attempt to produce keratinized skin cells from embryos.

Howard Green--who created the technique for culturing sheets of skin in vitro for transplant--and his colleagues at Harvard University set out to turn embryonic stem cells into keratinocytes and then isolate them. Unfortunately, it proved difficult to coax the stem cells to become skin cells in the first place. And those that did convert, Green says, grew poorly compared to donor skin cells.
In fact, the stem cells proved so deficient that the doctors had to introduce genetic material from the human papillomavirus (the virus responsible for cervical cancer) to induce enough keratinocyte growth. With that extra genetic material, the stem cell-derived skin cells proliferated; one line even produced the kind of connected sheet of cells familiar from Green's earlier work with skin grafts according to the findings published in the current online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science.
Although the stem cell-derived keratinocytes showed all the markings of such skin cells, such as the various proteins typically found in such cells (see image), they did not behave exactly like normal skin cells. Among other things, the stem-cell derived skin cells refused to differentiate in the same way as normal skin cells, Green explains. "It is commonly assumed that the cell types that people seek from stem cells are identical with what they're familiar with from studies of [adult] material," he says. "This is not the case for keratinocytes and may not be the case for other types."
This--plus the fact that the keratinocytes could only be cultured with a viral gene that could pose risks--means that such stem cell-derived skin cells are unlikely to be used anytime soon for skin grafts. And fulfilling the promise of embryonic stem cells may face even more challenges than heretofore imagined. "[Stem cells] are extremely interesting and powerful," Green adds. "We just have to keep working to see what will be the best applications." --David Biello

Hint: Use original container.

According to John Gearhart, director of research for Johns Hopkins University’s Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics.
. . . “We are going to use the information we get out of this research to get the patient’s own cells and work with them to get them to do what we want.” (Washington Fax, Novermber 19, 2002 - from Dr. Prentice's website presentation on stem cells, www.Stemcellresearch.org)

I would go so far as to predict that embryonic stem cells will not be used for treatment in humans. They are not subject to normal immunity and can't be controlled enough to pass any reasonable standard for use in human beings (other than the ones they started in, of course).

Stem cells, after their first flush of growth in the embryo, are slow growing to dormant. Ever so often they make "forays" out of the bone marrow or are awakened by local conditions. They make copies of themselves - some of which are identical and some of which are farther along the developmental line and some move about looking for areas to repair - becoming part of that area. Then the excess either return to dormancy or die of old age.

Besides,in "real life," the stem cell "stimulating factors" (the best influences, catalysts, or determinants of stem cells) are found - often easily and reliably found - in the local site where they are needed.

Last month, we learned that the sympathetic nervous system helps regulate the stimulation of bone marrow stem cells. In other words, stress leads to the release of epinephrine (adrenaline), which stimulates healing. (Paul Frenette, et.al., "Signals from the Sympathetic Nervous System Regulate Hematopoietic Stem Cell Egress from Bone Marrow." Cell, Vol 124, 407-421, 27 January 2006)

Animal models should be (and are in reality, despite the media's hype) the focus of laboratory research and the media's attention. So, cloning and the production of stem cell lines from embryos produced by IVF and parthenogenesis (or whatever) are just very crude, very destructive methods of research.

Nanotechnology and Federal Funding

Bioethics.net has a great discourse on nanotech, funding, and the effects of funding.

The comments are great.

Mine may not be so great, but, here it is:

The fascination with, and alarm surrounding, nanotech reminds me of every environmental, medical, and socio-biological controversy I've read about for the last 40, uh, 30, years.

The kernal of truth is that we may be messin' with things we don't understand and won't be able to measure until it's too late.

When we add the "mad, bad, and dangerous to be around," scientist ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4596662.stm ) to the warrior stereotype, and Luddites will join with Progressives who will pick up a few Organic Gardeners along the way, in the effort to control results.

But, humans like to figure out patterns and we can't seem to leave well enough alone. Besides, it's fun.

We'll keep on taking the machine apart and rebuilding it, hoping we don't have any pieces left over when we put it back together and that we don't strip or lose any of the important parts while we're trying to figure out how things work and how to improve them.

"Witchhunt" for conservative bioethicists and biotechnologists?

I wouldn't be surprised.

Michael Fumento, the author of one of the huge books on my shelves, Bioevolution, lost his job writing a column for the Scripps Howard News Service, due to accusations that he is "bought."

It seems that 5 years ago, he accepted grant money in order to write that book. That was 3 to 4 years before he started to write the column in question.

And, of course, his accusers can't stick with science, ideas, or facts. The attacks are personal and petty politics of personality. (alphabetical aliteration accidental and acknowledged)

In light of the evident standard of journalistic and information technology integrity, I call for the full disclosure of all funding by any beneficiary of George Soros, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the many incarnations of the "right to die" movement. While we're at it, let's get every PETA member, advocate and activist to come clean.

Discrimination

The New York Times published an interview with Douglas Melton, the Harvard researcher who is creating stem cell lines that are outside the guidelines for eligibility for Federal funds. He's not sure how many cell lines there are that come under those guidelines, and he's really fuzzy about when life begins, but he wants our tax money to support his lab.

Melton opines about the difficulty of setting up parallel labs, one which is funded by Federal tax money, and one which is not. He ought to recognize that the process (which he compares to keeping two Kosher kitchens) is just more practice in discriminating and drawing artificial lines between two purposes.

My first response is, There's nothing unethical about what we're doing here. We think embryonic stem cells can be made to become pancreatic beta cells and that they will be able to help diabetics produce their own insulin. I've never once doubted the morality of this work.

This is all about differing religious beliefs. I don't believe I have the right to tell others when life begins. Science doesn't have the answer to that question; it's metaphysical.

Now it's true, we use fertilized human eggs to derive embryonic stem cells. And those fertilized eggs have the potential, under certain circumstances, to become a living person. There are many who believe that there's a moral imperative to use that potential to try to help living sick people.

Learn more about Dr. Melton at the Harvard website. He believes that since the embryos can be frozen, they are only "potential" life, and that since the embryos were "extra," and destined for "destruction" anyway,what he does is "pro-life." By destroying the embryos, he intends to do good.

The "fertilized eggs" are human embryos, and they are living. Embryos have been successfully implanted and the children born after years and years of being frozen.

In the case of the embryos that Melton destroyed, if they had not been purposefully and intentionally placed in harm's way by the artificial circumstances of their beginnings they could join their brothers and sisters in their mother's arms.

Up to date dueling ethicists on cloning, stem cells, and embryos

I wonder sometimes whether Peter Singer (the Australian who is tenured professor of ethics at Princeton) can really mean what he says about infants who aren't worth protecting since Mom can always have another baby and his latest sillyness about embryos from nuclear transfer (the rest of us call it cloning). This week, Singer says that if the embryos from nuclear transfer have the moral status of human embryos, we must believe that each of our cells (potential donors of DNA for cloning, after all) now has the same status as that of embryos.

In his opinion articles (such as this one), Singer sets up straw men and defines terms and situations. He then determines "if" (his statement and facts), "then" (he must be right).

But, thanks to Dr. Dianne N. Irving, I was alerted that Robert P. George and Patrick Lee have answered Singer at National Review Online.

There's also a fairly well written discussion about stem cells in the January 26th issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. There is free full text access to the article "Beyond Fraud - Stem Cell Research Continues" by Snyder and Loring.


(Edited to close a parenthesis. 2-2-06, BBN)

Nanoethics board to address our microscopic worries

When we think of the concerns about the effects of organic chemicals from containers in food, hormones and antibiotics in animal feed, and the problems of changing the diversity within a microenvironment, it should be reassuring that the there is a new board concerned with the ethics of nanotechnology (manipulations of materials and the creation of machines on an atomic scale, that can't be "seen" without an electron microscope).

I'm concerned that the board will be window dressing - that (okay, I can't resist: their effect will be too small to notice)we may never hear from them again, and definitely will never hear that the members were able to halt or impede work that appears dangerous.

Oh, Joy!

Thank you to our Marchers in Washington

Thank you all for standing up for the weak, helpless, and voiceless. March strong and, in your unity, show that our "choice" is love for our fellow human beings.

Hair follicles, ethical neural stem cells, and a couple of silly tangents

Encouraging news about nerve stem cells found in the hair follicles in this abstract.

I would like to say that this is one of the clearest, best written abstracts that I've seen. Usually, the statistics, jargon and incredibly convoluted writing makes abstracts difficult to read or less informative than I'd like. This abstract tells us what the scientists did, why they did it and clearly outlines the results.

There's a lot of the "yuk" factor in this report. We forget that the test animals go through this sort of procedure, just as we forget the actual source of our hamburgers. I'm sorry and grateful for all the animals who suffer for human benefit. I still won't kill humans who are unable to suffer to save the animals. But I'm grateful.

I'm reminded of a night when I ate at a Italian restaurant with a bunch of friends. A couple were vegetarians, which I thought ridiculous. Then I realized that I was slightly ill at the thought of those who were eating veal. (I ordered chicken.)

We all have our limits as to what sort of pain and suffering and harm to other beings that we can and will tolerate. I'm an organic gardener, except for wasp nests on doors and web worms in the trees. I will go out of my way to avoid using poisons for these and am very cautious with even the "organic" methods, such as Bacillus thurengis, a bacteria that attacks larval forms of insects.

However, we cannot tolerate crossing of the limit that is the intentional killing of humans at all stages of life unless those humans are a threat to the life of another human. Even in these cases, if a non-deadly remedy can be found, we are bound to refrain from killing.

And Some News on Embryonic Stem Cell Research News

As Mr. Murdock noted, the House passed a bill last May (and the Senate could pass any day) that supported increased Federal Spending on embryonic stem cell research, relaxing the restrictions which require scientists to obtain funds from non-Federal sources if they want to kill more human embryos in stem cell research.

Just a few comments on current news on cloned and other embryonic stem cell research:

Wi-Cell is a pseudo-independent group that is associated with the University of Wisconsin. In order to destroy new embryos to create stem cell lines, scientists set up laboratories next door - or in another building - to the Federally funded labs. No money or equipment may be shared, but the same researchers often work in both labs. Of course, there's the added benefit that the lead researchers can also set up corporations and file for patents in their own names, in the hopes of earning money from their research.

(Interesting: the Scientific Director of Wi-Cell, James Thomson, DVM, PhD, is a veterinarian, not a human medical doctor.)

Wi-Cell announced on January 1st that they have a new technique for supporting and feeding cell lines that can be used in the development of stem cell lines without foreign animal proteins. In order to prove the usefulness and benefits of the new growth medium and process, two new embryonic stem cell lines were produced from 2 newly-killed human embryos. These were "donated" embryos, "left over" from in vitro fertilization.

(This technique for supporting cell lines could be useful for research into ethical adult and umbilical cord stem cell lines and other types of cell lines used in research, too, but the reports never mention this.)

In other words, these two young human lives were the no-longer needed or wanted brothers or sisters of children who are already in their mother's arms.

(Actually, I would imagine that more than 2 embryos were "disaggregated" - the production of embryonic stem cell lines is not efficient enough to get lines of stem cells from each embryo used.)

Review of Ethical Stem Cell Achievements

National Review On-Line has a great column by an author that is new to me, but who is evidently right on top of the cloning/embryonic stem cell/adult stem cell issue.

Deroy Murdock's "Let's Be Adult About This" covers the surprising number of reports of successes in treating patients with Spinal Cord Injury, diabetes, heart disease, and even blindness. Kudos to Mr. Murdock! I highly recommend reading his article.

For some, it's all about the suicide "choice"

After the articles that seemed to focus on end of life care, rather than "Physician Assisted Suicide," there were a few, including this one, that were focused on the "option" to commit suicide.

Most of the relatively healthy people who say that they are in favor of legalized prescribing of lethal doses of what could otherwise be used as medicine are concerned about controlling how and when they die. They seem more afraid of losing control than of pain or even being a burden.

Unfortunately, I haven't seen any in-depth studies of the opinions and thoughts of those who have taken advantage of Oregon's legalized suicide. I can't recall a report on the actual course of the acts of suicide.

Are there failures other than Mr Pruitt, whom we heard about a couple of years ago? How often do doctors interfer? How often does the patient actually self-administrate the suicide agent? How often does someone else give them the pills?

Debate on death is a "distraction"?

The debate is only a distraction if it keeps you from doing what you want - and intend - to do in the first place.

I read the Chicago Tribune article on the aftermath of the Supreme Court's decision on Oregon's law allowing those that are licensed by the State to practice medicine to prescribe substances for the intention of causing death.

Notice: I do not consider anyone who intends to cause death either a "physician" or a "doctor" or the substances that are used to cause death "medicine."

Unfortunately, the real "distraction" in the article is the dismissal of the subject of "Physician Assisted Suicide" and the Oregon law as a minor concern.

It is absolutely vital that true physicians be allowed and - even more - taught and encouraged to treat and relieve suffering, pain and distress. Modern medicine does allow for the relief of most of these, and the drugs in dispute can be used for the good intention of satisfying the (now old fashioned and "distracting") First Principle of Medicine: "Heal when possible, but first, do no harm."

"Only" 200 or so Oregonians have committed suicide under the law. "Only" 10 percent or so of those in the Netherlands die at the hands of their physicians. "Only" the very sick, old, young, and vulnerable.

What kind of world do we want to live in?

A most appropriate question on this day, when the Supreme Court ruled that Oregon's laws allowing physicians to write prescriptions intended to cause the death of patients.

This time, the question is asked by Kathryn Hinsch,the founder of the Womens Bioethics Project, in her "guest column" in the Seattle Post Intelligencer. The subject of the column is the fraud of Korean veterinarian, Hwang Suk Wu, who falsely claimed to have cloned human embryos in order to harvest stem cells. She notes the temptation to "play G_d" with biotechnology and concludes that the decisions are "too important to leave to the bioethicists, the scientists or the politicians."


It may seem that each day brings a new crisis for those of us who view human life as something to be valued and protected, whether the human is very young and may not even be born yet, whether conceived naturally or by the use of complicated technology and in a lab, or very sick or very old, and dependent on even more medicine and technology.

There's only one subject, not many. Cloning, harvesting of embryos for their stem cells, abortion, euthanasia and so-called "physician-assisted suicide" are all basically the same thing: the division of humans into those who will be protected by society and those who will not. Once we agree that our fundamental principle is that human life is to be protected from deliberate killing by others and that humans should not be used for the benefit of others without consent and benefit to the one being used, we can see that all the crises are actually only one crisis.

I agree with Ms. Hinsch that it is time for each of us to have a voice.

It is time to call, write or email your Federal and State legislators, demanding protection of human life, at all stages of life.

Edited January 27, 2010

Korea's (embryonic) stem cell stamp

Thanks to blog.bioethics.net, I found this stamp that was issued by the Korean government to commemorate the scientific fraud of the (very new) century. I don't know how long the Korean Post office will continue the page that contains the picture and story of the stamp, so you probably ought to look at it today.

Cloning fraud disaggregated

I'm all for stem cell research, I just wouldn't kill anyone for it or exploit and coerce young women for it. It appears that Hwang Woo Suk did both in addition to wasting human oocytes and embryos and lying about most of what he reported.

Not all fraud requires outright lies. Sometimes, the deception is achieved by not telling the whole truth or redefining the terms.

For example, "disaggregate" is the term coined by advocates and practitioners of the harvesting of human embryos for embryonic stem cells who wished to avoid the use of the terms "destroy, "dissect," "kill," and "sacrifice." You know, pretty much the same ones who tried to change "clone and kill" to "somatic cell nuclear transfer," then simply "nuclear transfer," and, finally, "production of patient-specific stem cells" in order to confuse the general public about the nature of their activities. These are the same people who would have us forget that not all "stem cells" are the same: some are produced without destroying a young human life or manipulation of the bodies of women, as though all were commodities or natural resources for mining and harvesting.

If you would like to read the actual Seoul National University investigating panel report on the fraud of the Korean Veterinarian, Hwang Woo Suk, the New York Times has published an English version. (Free registration is required.)
It seems appropriate to me that a doctor of veterinary medicine was only successful in his efforts to clone a dog, rather than humans.
However, it wasn't for lack of trying. The vet's lab received 2061 human oocytes from 129 human women. Some of those oocytes were used in attempts to produce cloned human embryos. Those that were produced were short lived, either because of their frailty and inherent defects or because of the planned attempts to harvest stem cells by "disaggregation." The laboratory records are unclear about the fate of all but about 273 of those "eggs."
Some of those oocytes were from the young Ph.D. candidates who worked for Hwang. Hwang denied knowledge of those donations, but the SNU report notes that the former "cloning king" accompanied his student to the hospital when her eggs were harvested.

Mad, bad, and dangerous to know

I may have to change the name of the blog! Or the name of the LifeEthics.org website, altogether.


Thanks to a poster on blog.bioethics.net, I read this description of the perception of scientists at the BBC Science website.

Edit - Jan 31, 2006 -- the link had aquired some noise in the form of a (close parenthesis) try this link http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4596662.stm

(redundancy is my friend)


Can you think of a more concise phrase to encompass "bioethics," that field of study which was invented by governments to discriminate between which humans can be killed and which should be protected?

Having a "Dallas" moment (Bobby never died and humans weren't cloned)

Most of you are probably too young to remember the actual television series, "Dallas," with JR, Bobby and all the Ewings. At the beginning of one season, we learned that everything we had seen and heard on the prime time soap opera in the last year was a dream. Pam Ewing woke to discover that Bobby wasn't dead - he was in the shower.

The last two years of cloning, hype and hyperbole about cloned human embryos which yielded human stem cell lines with exponential improvement in efficiency never happened. Hwang Woo Suk used about 3000 human oocytes crassly and unethically obtained and never produced even a single human stem cell line.

However, Hwang, the Korean veterinarian, did clone a puppy.

My Letter in Scientific American

Scientific American published a biased little op-ed in their October 2005 "SA Perspectives" titled "Fill This Prescription" concerning pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions that they consider harmful, saying,

It is tempting to wonder how far the principle of denying medicines for ethical reasons could stretch. Could one who disapproves of homosexuality refuse antiretrovirals to an HIV-positive gay man? If suffering is good for the soul, can one refuse to give out pain medication? But the pharmacists are not really fighting for a broad entitlement to morally judge which prescriptions to fill. And it is unnecessary to play "Where will this stop?" on an issue that already threatens women's vital reproductive rights.

The editors evidently believed that "blocking pregnancy" when there is a human embryo in existence prevents abortion and that pharmacists should learn and practice the art of suppressing their consciences. They also seemed unaware that - or not at all interested in - there is a very good chance that Preven and Plan B, the "morning after pills" in question may prove to be ethical for those who believe that it is permissable to prevent conception but not ethical to end the life of one conceived.

But, they can't be all bad, because they published my letter to them in the February 2006 issue.

Letters to the editor are not scientific documents and are limited in the amount of information that can be included, with restrictions on the number of words used and they are to the general readership of the publication, if not (as this really was) an attempt to change or effect the editor's viewpoints. So,for those of us who are pro-life and sticklers for absolute accuracy in terms we use, I'd like to explain a few things:
My letter is not as precise as I would like: I use the terms "morning after pill" to mean the protocols that the editorial mentioned although I know that not all "morning after pills" are the same. I also understand that there are some who object to all artificial contraception. And the use of the word "enforce" may very well mean more than I intended, especially to all the lawyers and law enforcement officers out there.

Nevertheless, here's my letter:

“Fill This Prescription” [SA Perspectives]
contains factual errors and false assumptions.
You state that when a woman has a prescription filled by a pharmacist, her “health is at the mercy of her pharmacist’s
conscience.” As a physician and a patient, I do not want pharmacists to suppress their consciences. Pharmacists protect patients and aid physicians. We depend on them not only to dispense medication correctly but also to judge interactions with patients’ other medical regimens and conditions. They act on knowledge that the physician or patient may not have about the risks from a given medication. They also determine a prescription’s legitimacy and enforce it.
The latest medical data indicate that morning-after pills block ovulation when they work. There is no evidence that they stop the implantation of an embryo.

Some other points: in nature, human pregnancy begins in the fallopian tube at fertilization; birth control that prevents conception is not synonymous with abortifacients; and the difference between dispensing abortifacients or antivirals is that the former is intended to end the life of a human being, whereas the latter is intended to save it.
Beverly B. Nuckols
Founder, LifeEthics.org
New Braunfels, Tex.

Pro-life need not apply

Speaking of ethics in reporting about scientific research, there hasn't been much coverage of the study out of New Zealand that concludes that abortion hurts women and the difficulty the authors had in finding a publisher, as noted by Stuff.co.nz , an - ? or should I say "the"? -on-line New Zealand news source:

There is great irony in the finding by a New Zealand medical research team that women who have an abortion are at increased risk of mental illness.

An estimated 98 per cent of the approximately 18,000 women who undergo an abortion each year do so on the dubious pretext that to have a baby would be harmful to their mental health. Now this authoritative study suggests that the real risk to their mental health may lie in having the abortion. If the subject weren't so serious, it would be almost comical.

But don't expect much public debate over this embarrassing finding. Politicians and the health sector will want to bury the report as quickly and quietly as possible. They have been doing their best to ignore the abortion issue for 30 years because they don't like to be reminded of the dishonesty and hypocrisy inherent in New Zealand's abortion policy.

An interesting footnote to the release of the study is that several medical journals refused to publish it, even though it breaks important new ground. Professor David Fergusson, who headed the study (and incidentally describes himself as pro-choice), suspects this was because the subject was too controversial. So much for freedom of speech and commitment to greater understanding of important health issues – to say nothing of better-informed patients.

If no one notices, maybe it didn't happen. A Google news search results in only 43 articles, and all but 26 are duplicates.

Scientific Journal Rivalry?

The scientific journal, Nature, devotes quite a bit of its space in the January 12, 2006 issue to two editorials and one review article concerning ethics, peer review, and the spectacular failure of both in the publication of the "results" of the Korean veterinarian, Hwang Wu Suk, in the cloning of human embryos for the harvest of "patient specific" embryonic stem cells. Unfortunately, except for the table of contents, the on-line edition is subscription-only - but try to find a "dead tree" copy, if you can.


Here's the pertinent information on the report from the Seoul National University report that all of Hwang's reports in Science were completely false:

Further investigation revealed that mitochondrial DNA from the cell line matched one of the egg donors, but the DNA inside the cells' nuclei varied at several locations. The committee concluded that the line was derived by parthenogenesis — where the single set of chromosomes in an egg develop as if it were fertilized. The images and data in the paper that showed perfect matches were fabricated.

The committee also found that Hwang worked with a staggering number of eggs — 2,061 from 129 women — despite claiming to have used only 242 eggs for the 2004 study and 185 for the 2005 study.

The findings are a huge setback for therapeutic cloning — the idea that cloned embryos could be used as a source of patient-matched stem cells to replace damaged tissues in a range of diseases. Even using numbers of human eggs of which other researchers can only dream, Hwang's team was unable to derive such stem cells, and the field is now left with no evidence that it is possible in humans at all (see Nature, 438, 1056–1059; 2005).

The committee did find that Hwang succeeded in cloning human embryos to the blastocyst stage, from which stem cells can be derived. But the success rate was just 10%, and they were "in poor condition". The only other group to have some success, Alison Murdoch's team at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, has cloned just a single blastocyst (M. Stojkovic et al. Reprod. BioMed. Online 11, 226–231; 2005).

No, Mr. Singer, you don't get to kill

Peter Singer and Marc Hauser make the case for abortion, clone and kill, and euthanasia, buried in an op-ed to convince us that no one needs religion to be moral in an article published in the Jerusalem Post, called "Godless morality." (Singer and Hauser act as if none of us have heard of "Natural Law," which is just as plausible - or more so - as their explanation. Why even they admit that we're built that way. The authors have more faith in evolution resulting in moral behavior than in the concept that a G_d, Who loves justice and mercy, would create creatures who hold love for one another as their highest value.)

The authors make their case by asking us to choose between "permissable," "obligatory" and "forbidden" in three hypothetical "situations:"

1. A runaway boxcar is about to run over five people walking on the tracks. A railroad worker is standing next to a switch that can turn the boxcar onto a side track, killing one person, but allowing the five to survive. Flipping the switch is ________.

2. You pass by a small child drowning in a shallow pond, and you are the only one around. If you pick up the child, she will survive and your pants will be ruined. Picking up the child is _______.

3. Five people have just been rushed into a hospital in critical condition, each requiring an organ to survive. There is not enough time to request organs from outside the hospital, but there is a healthy person in the hospital's waiting room. If the surgeon takes this person's organs, he will die, but the five in critical care will survive. Taking the healthy person's organs is _______.

Neither 1 nor 3 are "permissable."

No one may legitimately act to cause the death of any one else unless the one being killed is the actual threat to the life of another. The actions in 1 and 3 are wrong, even if the intention is good.

However, both scenarios are examples of exactly why "bioethics" was created in the '70's: so those in power (by fact of majority, judicial representation or by convincing the actual majority to be still and quiet because "that's not fair!" or "my story is sadder, more deserving, more heartwrenching than yours - besides, I cry louder and more convincingly than you can!") may decide who will be killed and who will not.

We might forgive (and make seem "permissable") the switch operator in number 1 because of the emergent nature of the act - because people are not perfect and omniscient, people make mistakes in the heat of the moment. We react out of compassion for the 5 that outweighs our concern for one.

The argument could even be made that not deciding might seem a decision.

But, these are immature and emotional rationalizations, not ethics: no matter how well intentioned, no matter how good the balance of the consequences might seem, it is always wrong to act to cause the death of a human being who is not a danger to life of other human beings.

(Besides - The lone man could be me or you or the one man on earth who could cure all forms of cancer, while the 5 could be Hitler and his cabinet - Or Peter Singer and his co-authors.)

The utilitarian would like us to think of people as interchangeable parts with planned obsolescence - we should feel the same way about the strangers on the other side of the world as we do about our own families, right? Isn't that the meaning of "equality?"

But they turn their final answer to the lowest common denominator:
Health care for everyone from the first dollar, but each person can only have the same amount total. (Tylenol for free, but no dialysis after 55 years old)
Public education, but a minimal standard so no one's left out (and no one is rewarded for excellence or punished for lack of ability or effort).
Public transportation, but only the elite can ride in SUV's without being derided for being selfish.

Since people are interchangeable, and we can always make new ones, why waste "limited resources" on someone who costs us too much, or who can't (yet or anymore) interact with us?

I did NOT make that mistake!

The research showing statistically significant increased risk in young women actually came from Christchurch, New Zealand. But - the article I first read and reported on came from the Syndney Herald.

I know better to mix Aussies and Kiwis!

There's a transcript of an interview with the main researcher, David Fergusson, and an Australian radio personality during which the professor discloses that he had difficulty getting his results published and that he believes that researchers are frightened off of studies on abortion and its effects on women because " if you do research in this area, one side or the other is going to turn upon you, because your results don't support them."

And some of the most gullible (who believed in human clones, for pity's sake!) won't believe until their own sources vet the information. Granted, the actual number of abortions is low - only 15% of those who remained in the study from birth to 25 years old even sought abortion - the result was a little over 90 abortions.

Of course, the abortion advocate quoted in the Herald speculates that some women might not have "mentioned" their abortions, and so they threw the numbers off.

But, thanks to the posts on blog.bioethics.net, here's the address for the actual article in pdf. Will get back to y'all after I've read it.

Of course, the abortion advocate quoted in the Herald speculates that some women might not have "mentioned" their abortions, and so they threw the numbers off.

Soon, we'll hear about the flaws in Professor Fergusson's past - he won't get the praise and approval that the Korean Veterinarian who claimed to clone and kill humas got.

TV's "ER" on Abortion 1-5-06

From Australia this week, we learn that women and girls who have an abortion are more at risk of depression, anxiety and substance abuse.

Last night, two characters in the NBC television medical drama/soap opera, "ER," were confronted with unexpected pregnancies, in the episode titled, "If Not Now." One "chose" abortion, another did not.

The medical facts in "ER" are usually fairly accurate, although the characters and situations are extreme and set up for all the drama and sensationalism that the writers can milk from the stories. I can only recall a single healthy childbirth - that of Susan, one of the original Emergency Department residents who later became an attending physician (she's no longer with the show - life was too good, I guess). Even this marriage and pregnancy began with a fling between strangers who later fell in love and decided to begin a family.

The most recent story concerned "Abby," a 37 year old unmarried woman doctor who is a recovering alcoholic and who has a a family history of bipolar disease, and a 15 year old girl from a religious family who presents to the ER after being the victim of date rape.

First, I wonder whether the writers have ever actually talked to a pro-life, religious person or whether they just read a few pamplets or visited a website for reference. Most of the dialogue between the girl, her parents and the doctors was totally unrealistic and stereotyped. The actual views expressed ("It's against G_d." "A new life has begun." "The baby shouldn't be punished." "It's G_d's will.") were accurate, but they seemed to come from wind-up robots rather than real people in a real situation.

A second point is that this was one of the worst examples of "informed consent" that I have ever seen. The doctor - "Luka Kovac," an attending physician who is also the father of Abby's child and has other problems in his past- proceeded with placement of laminaria in order to "give G_d the chance to change his mind," and induce what he called a miscarriage. In effect, the doctor not only deceived the parents of the girl and acted in direct opposition to their wishes (which, evidently is legal in Illinois), but he lied to the girl. This girl believes that abortion is "against G_d," had not dealt at all with her rape, has a history of risky behavior, and had only found out about her pregnancy that day. She is in danger of severe psychological and behavioral consequences, and the abortion and deception of her parents can only increase her guilt and the isolation from those who could and should be the safest, best and appropriate counselors, support and shelter for her.

Third, what was the hurry???

There was an interesting moment when the woman resident, "Neela," who was involved in the case asked permission from Luka to present the case to another attending, "who is not Catholic." Luca reacted with a controlled anger, stating that he is first a doctor who cares for patients without any bias. However, unknown to the resident, he has already been shown as biased toward the position that, although he would prefer that Abby "keep it," whether or not she aborts their child is her "choice."

What an awful world where women and girls are placed in the position of "choosing," all alone and in themselves, whether to continue a pregnancy or to have someone kill their child! Whether for their own good at the time or in the future, for the "good" of the child who is at risk of disease or the result of rape after the mother passes out from drinking, or because the mother is young. I recall the horror and empathy people had for another fictitious character in "Sophie's Choice."

"Feminists for Life" is an organization that stresses that most abortions harm at least two people: the child whose life is ended and his mother. Take a look at their website for the "herstory" of abortion.

Cord blood banking does not deprive the donor

I've become aware that some well-meaning people are opposed to cord blood banking.

I've never collected blood for banking, but I've sent placentas off to research (when I was in training) and a couple off for pathology examination. Most just go in the trash.

We do collect a teaspoon or less of the cord blood from each child born in a hospital or birthing center with a lab. The blood is checked for "blood count" to evaluate for congenital anemia, blood type, and (if I recall correctly) for a couple of diseases.

The procedure does not take anything from the baby, as the cord is clamped and cut by the time of harvest. The baby is no longer connected, at all.

But, there's not that much time or volume of blood involved. Practical, common sense, proof comes from all the babies born from Cesarean sections: the baby is actually always above the cord after being delivered, and the cord is immediately clamped and the placenta delivered by the doctor. If there are bad effects from the child being deprived of maximum blood from the placenta and cord after birth, we would see the pattern in these children.

By the way, my grand daughter just celebrated her 4th anniversary of her cord blood stem cell bone marrow transplant. She's just fine - bright and the sweetest personality I've ever met. (She and I agree that she's "superduper"!) We don't know what the future will hold for a girl who now has male bone marrow and all the stem cells that will come from it. But we do know that she wouldn't be here with her own bone marrow, and that she had a much higher chance of graft versus host disease from an adult donor's tissue.

Essay on stem cells and cloning from the UK

Excellent piece - it's almost poetry - from the Telegraph on the history and current state of stem cell research. I hope you will read the whole piece which discusses stem cells in light of their potential for good and bad regeneration - or healing and cancer.

The stem-cell breakthrough happened long ago. Hercules was obliged as one of his Labours to kill the Hydra, which was hard because the beast grew two heads whenever one was cut off. She gave her name to a tiny freshwater polyp - and stem cell research began. In 1744 the Geneva biologist Abraham Trembley cut a Hydra into two. To his surprise the body grew a head, and the head sprouted a body - and he persuaded some of his subjects to grow seven heads. The animal did the same of its own accord, for it copied itself by budding. Trembley's friend, Charles Bonnet, went further. In a remarkable prediction he suggested that such creatures contained "sleeping embryos" that woke up when a part of the body was removed, to replace it. Those somnolent structures are now called stem cells.

and

Exactly a century ago, Hydra opened a new chapter in biology. A mashed extract of head applied to a different individual caused new heads to appear. Soluble chemicals, it seemed, control development. Repair, too, turns on messages diffusing from a source to a target cell and to the DNA itself.

Science fiction and science fact

The clone king, Korean veterinarian Wu Suk Hwang, must be suffering from some very bad karma. The story of his human cloned embryos and stem cells is beginning to remind me of the Raelians' saga.

The egg-count is going up - currently around 2000 for the first report in 2004's Science report on a single cell-line.

As reported by blog.bioethics.net from a story in the Korean Herald,one of the research assistants/Ph.D slaves candidates, Park , is now saying that she was forced or threatened into undergoing the oocyte donation procedure. Which causes more calls for more regulations and oversite at the bioethics.net site.

There were regulations concerning oocyte donation and the world was watching. There was even an American scientist, Gerald Schatten, who at least helped translate the reports, if he was not the actual author, using data supplied by Hwang, et. al.

If you'll recall, Dr. Schatten had problems with his sources, once before. Some would speculate that men and women who manipulate human life while convincing themselves that some lives are worth less or worthless may not have any concern for rules and regulations. Unless they are caught, are getting paid for regulating, or have a political statement to make.

Money and research should be focused on discovering the ways that our post-embryonic bodies repair themselves and in (ethical) non-embryo-destructive stem cells and stem cell recruiting factors. Cloned cells are, by their nature (or non-natural production), abnormal from the beginning. On the contrary, adult stem cells are more likely to be "patient-specific." The goal should be to learn to stimulate a patient's own stem cells at the site.

Tradition has called for the use of animal models in research to prove and improve techniques. In the last 20 years, some human lives were reduced to the moral status of lab rats or guinea pigs. This time, adult women with hopes of helping the sick and dying (and achieving their doctorates) were exploited.

If there are new regulations, the place to start is with increased responsibility for the use of human tissues, including gametes that not only can be used to create nascent human beings for destruction, but which rely on the manipulation of and harvest from the bodies of human women.

What became of all those eggs?

The Korean veterinarian, Woo Suk Hwang,paid for and otherwise procured hundreds - maybe a thousand - of human oocytes that were supposedly used in his now-debunked research to produce human cloned embryonic stem cells. (For history - see this AAAS press release from May which emphatically repeats the "unpaid donor" line)

What actually happened to those cells?

Another Roe

Roe Yung Hye, dean of research at Seoul National University, that is. Dr. Roe is the lead man cited by the New York Times as revealing that the University has determined that none of the 11 cloned human embryonic stem cells reported in Science this last June exist. They probably never did.

The NYT is also reporting that two of the female researchers on the team have received money from Hwang or his associates. The Washington Post reports that some of this money was delivered by the Korean spy agency, the National Intelligence Service. It seems that the government - or some powerful representatives of the Korean government - wanted to avoid the shame that the Nation would face.

Woo Suk Hwang, the Korean veterinarian and erst-while "cloning king," has filed a legal complaint with authorities that some of his reported human cloned embryo stem cell lines were switched by someone else - but he's also been accused by his own university of intentional fabrication of the report in the first place.

The Seoul National University committee charged with investigating their celebrity researcher has determined that Hwang had only produced 2 - not 11 - stem cell lines at the time that his report was published in the journal, Science.

As I post tonight, I've been watching an old Robert Mitchum movie, "Foreign Intrigue." The 1956 story about blackmail and murder, all tied up in money, nationalism, and secrecy is less far fetched than the cloning intrique of 2005.

Snips and snarls

Bioethics.net has a cute post today about the origins of Snuppy the Cloned Dog.

But, the editors - and Art Caplan, who is not, but might as well be an editor - can't resist doing what they were complaining about others doing.

On the same day as the note about Snuppy - and many more covering the disaster that is Scientific integrity this year but not too far removed in time from great support for the Korean veterinarian who may or may not have cloned people and dogs, Hwang - Caplan has a signed post attacking the credibility of Wesley Smith and the Discovery Institute. Seems a case of people in glass houses throwing sooty pots.

Jones didn't and can't "discredit" anything. He only ruled against one particular method and declared his opposition to motives.

The court system should be thought of as similar to the reporting on scientific research. We've had a very graphic lesson that first reports in the journals aren't the final word. And not all scientists have the highest integrity and motives. Judges are fallible and can be overturned (Glucksberg on the "right-to-die", Dred Scott on slavery are two cases that come to mind). This ruling will be reviewed.

Science and law should be arenas of ideas, not personalities and personal attacks.

While waiting for the review of the Dover school case, I'm going to look at the beauty of creation, or nature.

The fake science drinking game

A new drinking trend to substitute for the 'poktanju' (bombshot) culture has surfaced during year-end celebrations among working people. Dubbed the "Hwang Woo-suk poktanju", it involves creating 11 glasses of drinks, numbering them 2 to 12. Of these, no. two and three are made of 'fake' drinks such as water instead of beer.

The Korea Herald reports a new fad. I'm not sure about the socio-psychological meaning of drinking games, but scientific integrity is becoming an oxymoron.

Great news: Umbilical Cord funding passed Congress!

The Senate finally stopped holding the funding for umbilical cord blood banking and databanking hostage to embryonic stem cell research funding, after passage in the House in May of this year, and the President signed the Bill today.

Tom Harkin and the rest of the pro-clone-and-embryo-destruction crowd would rather have the embryonic stem cell research funding (Which unfortunately included "Republicans" Orin Hatch and Arlen Specter), but they're bound to eventually see that research funding is research funding. After all, human cloning is not doing so well in the rest of the world, with some of the disputed pictures from the Korean veterinarians' efforts showing up in an earlier publication, where they weren't labeled as cloned.

Irving Weissman, who has money and a job at stake in both adult and embryonic stem cells, says that the

My granddaughter was born with some unidentified genetic defect - the hemotologist couldn't even guess - and was unable to make enough white blood cells from birth at 31 weeks. Her top Absolute Nucleocyte Count was 1.8 - White Blood Cell count usually totaled under 2. Her platelets dropped regularly and, despite daily Nupogen and Epogen shots, her WBC and then red blood cell count fell. she got near-weekly bone marrow biopsies and blood tests, a few platelet transfusions and only one RBC transfusion. Before her first birthday, she began evaluation for a bone marrow transplant and even though no family members matched, she was lucky enough to have four non-related matches.

Then, she was offered a chance to be one of the first candidates for an umbilical cord blood "bone marrow" transplant, which she received at 15 months of age at Cook's Children's hospital in Fort Worth Texas.

Her donor was a boy, her new bone marrow karyotype is 46 XY. (She's the only person I actually know whose karyotype - two of them - I've seen) The match was about 70%, if I recall correctly.

She's incredibly healthy 4 years later. No need ever for anti-rejection drugs. She even had an open fracture when a boy at school closed a door on her finger - grew back pretty bone and finger tip (did you ever try to keep a cast clean and dry on a 5 year old?)

The bone marrow and umbilical cord transplants are, I believe, our best hope for the future of regenerative medicine research.The UBC stem cells are proving more and more pliable, and several different populations of multipotent stem cells have been produced from UBC and bone marrow sources. Much more than any hype or hope about embryonic creation and destruction.

It looks like most of the Korean stem cell reports were falsified and/or exaggerated. But, the traditional lines are being drawn by the elitists who would define human beings as those who are "persons," and those who are not.

Bioethics.net.com:

""Doerflinger and other critics of stem-cell research are quick to forget about the merits of the science or the needs of the sick and to use the Korean scandal to impugn what their moral compass unerringly tells them must be abhorrent -- seeking to take stem cells out of human embryos made from a human egg and DNA from a skin cell.""

It's disingenuous to say that the cloned human embryos in question are an egg and a skin cell. And the editors don't appear to be aware of their own biases and too quick to claim bias on the part of Mr. Doerflinger.

As one of those in favor of stem cells as long as you don't kill someone - even an embryonic someone - it seems to me that the only source of an internal honesty or integrity are either the respect for fellow humans or the fear of punishment and humiliation. From the base of respect for other humans it's logical that Mr. Doerflinger and I would not approve of creating and killing human embryos for their parts.

We've had years of arguing the status of the human embryo and each scandal is worse than the last. But the limits keep being pushed for for some terrible, sad story. The last limit is now the justification for going beyond the next.

In the meantime, the results have been stolen embryos (UCalIrving, another one of Schatten's bad relationships), IVF specialists who use their own sperm to "help" their clients, and more human individuals excluded from the protection given to the currently defined "human persons."

The re-definition of humans to "persons" is the first lie.

AROWS: Estrogen for everyone!

"I knew it! More 'scientific' fakery! I want my estrogen, and I want my estrogen, now!" So declared the spokeswoman of AROWS, shouted as she fanned her flushed face at the press conference held this morning. 'Post AROWSal women have been misled for the last time. We will demand to know what he knew and when he knew it!" (AROWS = Age Related Ovarian Wasting Syndrome - it's a joke, Readers.)

There's a report on that bastion of medical reporting, MSNBC.com, about the flaws in the Prempro study on women and heart disease. Of course the medicine combination was not enlightening on heart disease prevention in nature: it did not mimic nature.

The point is that some studies show helpful effects, some don't. For some reason women don't get their heart attacks until later than men, and we also have periodic changes in estrogen rather than testosterone. The take home should be: there hasn't been a decent study, yet.

"And your little dog, too!"

Snuppy could be a fake!

Money, sex (okay,gametes), and power.

The cloning and embryonic stem cell money fervor reminds me of the scandals when a preacher or priest is caught in sin. In the meantime, no one seems to understand that there might not have been any human cloned embryonic stem cells, and scientific credibility may never be the same.

For the last five years, we've been asked to place our hands on the radio and send in our money for the promise of a miracle cure. And now, it looks like the latest, loudest scientific missionary - the veterinarian, Wu Suk Hwang, has sinned big time.


Science is a religion for many in today's world. On the TV show Grey's Anatomy, at least one of the characters compared belief in a higher power with believing in Santa Claus and proclaimed her faith in Science and its miracles, rather than having faith in a higher Power. (Every one of the interns needs a good anti-depressant, in my opinion.)

The mascara is running over at Bioethics.com: the editors (and Arthur Caplan, who is not an editor, but acts like one)are crying over their own reputation, but stll can't post without somehow making snide remarks about Karl Rove, Leon Kass, and/or the protection of human life. Nigel Cameron, Wesley Smith and Richard Doerflinger have been sought out for quotes by the NYTimes, since they might have been right all along about the hype attached to embryonic stem cells.

Then, we get the daily "I have sinned!!! (but not that bad)" chest beatings by Hwang, et. al., and front row seats to schisms and heresy and flat out lies about cloned human embryonic stem cells:

The event that led to Dr. Hwang's downfall, after a month of sniping at certain puzzling aspects of his published work, was the posting of a pair of duplicate photos on two Korean Web sites.

One of the new duplicate photos appears in the June Science article about the 11 patients and a second in the Oct. 19 issue of a lesser-known journal, The Biology of Reproduction, where it was reported as being of a different kind of cell.

In the Science article, the cell colony was labeled as being the fifth of Dr. Hwang's human embryonic cell lines derived from a patient's cells, but in the Biology of Reproduction article it was designated as an ordinary embryonic cell line generated in the MizMedi hospital in Korea, presumably from surplus embryos created in a fertility clinic.

Critics cited the duplication as confirming suspicions that Dr. Hwang had never successfully cloned any adult human cell and that his Science photos might instead show just human embryonic cell lines derived in the usual way from fertility clinic embryos.

Dr. Roh's statements make that now seem exactly what happened.

Dr. Roh, the superintendent of MizMedi, was asked by The New York Times on Wednesday to say which type of cell was represented in the photos. Dr. Roh was the senior author of the article in Biology of Reproduction, which Dr. Hwang did not sign. Dr. Roh replied by e-mail that the photo had come from a large computer file of stem cell colonies and that a colleague had accidentally chosen one of the patient-derived colonies to illustrate the Biology of Reproduction article.

Dr. Roh had heard about the error just two hours earlier, he wrote in his e-mail message, and had already written to the editor of the journal requesting that the article be withdrawn immediately. "I really apologize again to have made a big mistake as a principal investigator," he wrote.

Embryonic stem cells from bone marrow

Thanks to a lead from FreeRepublic.com, here's another great story on adult stem cells - these mimic the cell markers of embryonic stem cells! And they have been induced to produce pancreas, kidney and nerve cells.


Now,

Back to the circus - Scientific integrity has never taken such a hit.

Will Hwang withdraw his paper on human stem cells?

Even Scientific American is reporting that Roh, one of the doctors who helped procure the embryos, is saying that the stem cells were fabricated.

Cloning blow up: A great summary

Richard Doerflinger has written a great summary of the issues and personalities surrounding the cloning implosion.

And, thanks to ProLifeBlogs, I found that another blogger called the scandal a "house of cards." Good links and info on Marlowe's Shade.

"Implosion" of Cloners

Think of a house of cards, and there's a strong wind blowing the fallen cards all over the place.

The work of Korean veterinarian, Dr. Woo Suk Hwang, the leader in cloning research until a couple of weeks ago, is under fire from his own former staff, colleagues and the press. Science, the Journal that published (see, "Korean team speeds up creation of cloned human stem cells") the report concerning the production of 11 human embryonic stem cell lines derived from cloned embryos, has been asked to retract the article (Sorry, subscription only - look at thte bottom of this post for quotes) by one of the co-authors and a pretty impressive list of names. One of the detractors is Ian Wilmut, who gained fame for cloning Dolly the sheep.

Personally, I'm concerned about what the blow up could mean for scientific research and reporting in general. The big question is, like so much of science these days, an echo of the political questions of "who knew, and when." More than likely prejudices for and against cloning, embryonic stem cells and eugenics played a large part in both the early enthusiastic acceptance of the first report and the fuss and bother we're going to see in the next year.

Now, add in the FDA, Merck and Vioxx.

Where is the scientific process in these dramas and how do we trust any thing we read if Science and a group of supposed leaders can be fooled? And were they really fooled?

Thanks to Bioethics.net for many of the links.

I do hope that Dr. Hwang gets well. He's been in and out of the hospital, reportedly with bleeding ulcers, and seeking solace at a Buddhist monastery.


From the letter to Science:

Human Embryonic Stem Cells
Ian Wilmut, Michael D. West, Robert Lanza, John D. Gearhart, Austin Smith, Alan Colman, Alan Trounson, Keith H. Campbell
". . . In addition to a willingness to facilitate the independent verification of published results, it may be helpful to institute an internet database to publish the DNA fingerprinting and microsatellite data on new lines to ensure against the cross-contamination of cell cultures or scientific misconduct."

"I want your organs"

As reported by the Daily Pennsylvanian, Arthur Caplan, PhD, director of the University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics, and faculty member in the Medical Ethics department,gave a talk at the University of Pennsylvania conference entitled, "'I Want Your Organs: How Should We Get Donors and Who Should Get Their Parts?"

Really? Couldn't they come up with a better, more professional title?

I'm sure that this was a fairly straightforward talk to faculty, residents and students (both undergraduates and med students) about organ donation and the supply of organs.

Just as this post got your attention with the headline, I'm sure that the title of the conference was intended to catch the attention of the intended audience.

It looks as though Dr. Caplan may favor the "assumed donor" programs of other countries, rather than our purposeful, consent required process in the US. I would argue against the implied or assumed consent for cadaver donation. I believe that any organ donation should require specific consent, at least from the loved ones who are left behind, if not by the donor himself.

I'm a big proponent of ethical organ donation. However, I am uncomfortable with sensationalizing the subject and the risk of "comodification" or marketing and trivializing of our bodies.

Whatever we are, we can measure and experience only through our bodies, which are more than interchangable parts. If there is to be any respect for one another, the body must be the target of that respect.

I would like to point out that organ donation is not an all or nothing act. If you are uncomfortable with "donating your face," make it known to your loved ones, write it down and your wishes should be honored.

Stem Cells: Bioethicist Hurlbut on Alternative Sources

Some of you may be familiar with teratomas and molar pregnancies from arguments with abortion advocates. These are often the focus of some "yes, but,,,," in the attempt to "prove" that the embryo is not a human being. These are the result of gametes that begin dividing and which can mimic some of the signs and symptoms of pregnancy in a woman's body, but which are never embryos.

One of my favorite columnists, Kathryn Jean Lopez of National Review Online, has an interview with Dr. William B. Hurlbut concerning his ideas on alternative sources of stem cells and the nature of human personhood. Be sure and take a look at the conversation, and read to the bottom, where the dishonesty of the Korean cloning Veterinarian, Hwang, is discussed.

Altered Nuclear Transfer is a theoretical way to stimulate a construct that will grow embryonic stem cells without ever growing an embryo.

When I first heard about the proposition, I was one of those convinced that the technique would involve creating a disabled embryo for research purposes. The interview covers that controversy and confirms that he would not be a party to any unethical procedure. He is committed to the idea of proving the technique in animal models before any research with human DNA.

Essentially, the idea is to create a tumor or a culture which could be used instead of cloned or IVF embryos to study development and disease. As in cloning, donor DNA from a somatic cell would be used. However, the DNA would be altered before it is inserted into an oocyte or otherwise induced to divide and differentiate. The alteration would be to a gene - which gene is still unknown - that controls early embryonic development.



I've said it before: I'm convinced that all of this early research will lead to techniques for regenerative medicine in situ, using environmental stimulators and recruitment factors to allow each of us to heal our own bodies. We just have to hope that our influence and the honor of scientists - or their distaste for controversy and lack of funding - will keep the loss of nascent human lives to a minimum.

Pro-abortion lawyer argues in favor of parental notification

Jonathan Turley has an editorial in USAToday chiding pro-abortion activists for their opposition to parental involvement in a daughter's abortion.

Pro-choice advocates would make abortion the only absolute right in our Constitution, even though it was not fully recognized by the Supreme Court until 1973. Conversely, parental rights have been recognized since the founding of our Republic but are routinely dismissed when they collide with the almighty right to an abortion.

Mr. Turley does a great job discussing the nature of "absolute" rights and the all or nothing attitude of pro-abortion activists.

However, I would describe "rights" a bit differently. Rights are better thought of as "negative rights." It's not that I have an absolute right to freedom of speech, but that I have the right not to be silences - to expect you not to try to prevent me from speaking and to call on society to aide me if you do force your will on me to be quiet. By the same thinking, I don't have the right to live forever or take whatever my life needs, but I do have the right not to be killed. And to call on society to aid me if you try or to restrain you if you succeed in killing me. Many of us believe society should punish, too. (I'd rather think of this punishment as prevention of further harm, but I'm still working that one out - I'll probably have the answer when I'm 80 years old.)

Negative rights do not demand an action, except by legal representatives and those we hire. They are, in fact, limits on the actions of others where those rights would cause harm. To force involuntary action would be to make the other a slave.

In the case of Mr. Turley's example as to yelling "fire!" in a crowded theater, those of us in the theater have the right not to be placed in harm's way. If there is a fire, we need to know. But if there is no fire, and we and our neighbors are falsely alarmed, risking panic and trampling, then we are placed in harm's way.

Gallup Abortion Poll

Editor and Publisher reported on last month's Gallup Poll on US attitudes and preferences concerning abortion. But, they skewed the results, saying

More than three-fourths of the respondents feel that abortion should be legal in varying circumstances. Thirty-nine percent of the respondents said that abortion should only be legal in a few circumstances.

The fact is that 74% would restrict abortion, at least in some circumstances. 39% who would restrict abortion in most circumstances, plus the 16% who would ban abortion outright and an additional 16% who would make abortion illegal, at least in some circumstances. It just depends on how you read the numbers, I guess.

At least E&P covered the poll. Not many others did.
There was very limited coverage of the November 2005 Gallup poll concerning the general US approval of limitations on abortion, with only slightly more attention to the numbers concerning parental consent and notification.

Unfortunately, the poll results themselves require subscription , and so, most people are dependent on media sources to see them. Well, here they are:


2005 Nov 11-13
Legal under any circumstances 26%
Legal under most circumstances 16%
Legal in only a few circumstances 39%
Illegal in all circumstances 16%
No Opinion 2%


In fact, those numbers have been very stable over the last 30 years, with approximately 50-55% choosing "under certain circumstances" every year, going as high as 61% in 1997. "Legal under any circumstances" has been consistently under 30%, except for the years 1990-1992, rising to 34% in June and July 1992.That was the only year that the "legal under circumstances dropped to 49%.

Last month's poll included a question about parental consent for minor girls, but did not ask about notification of parents (The focus of the Supreme Court testimony last week). That poll showed that 69% of those polled are in favor of consent, which is a higher duty than simply letting the parents know about the abortion.

Most U.S. adults think parents should not just be notified, but should have to give their permission, before a minor daughter has an abortion. For more than a decade, Gallup has found roughly 7 in 10 Americans favoring laws that require women under 18 to receive parental consent for any abortion. The latest poll, conducted Nov. 11-13, finds 69% in favor and 28% opposed to such laws.

and, in fact,

However, rather than being solidly opposed to parental consent, abortion rights advocates are somewhat closely divided on the issue. Nearly half of those who think all abortions should be legal favor parental consent laws; just 52% oppose them. The majority (58%) of those who think abortions should be legal in most circumstances say they favor such laws.

Clone lies - small and large

New updates on the problems with the South Korean cloning and embryonic stem cell program: missing scientists and accusations of fraud in reporting results and publishing credits.

Forbes online reports that the veterinarian who headed the cloning project is in seclusion at a Buddhist temple.

Besides accusations that the oocytes were aquired in questionable circumstances (donation for pay, concerns with informed consent, and abuse of Ph.D. candidates), now there are questions about the actual results.

Nature has a piece today in drug discovery @ nature.com on the multiple scandals, including questions about the patent credit given to one researcher, who was not even one of the co-authors:

Young Mo Koo, a bioethicist at Korea's University of Ulsan, says Hwang has not addressed enough questions about his involvement with the egg donors: There needs to be an investigation by an independent party.

For example, Hwang claims to have known nothing of the payments until a few days before his confession when Roh told him. Yet in April 2004 he told Nature that he had himself arranged many of the donors at the hospital concerned. Roh was awarded 40% of the patent resulting from the paper, on which he was not an author. He says he does not know why Hwang offered him so much but that it was not compensation for providing the eggs. I don't need any rewards, he says. Hwang has not disclosed his expenditures or budget for the project, saying only that all funds came from private sources.

The extent to which a junior member of his laboratory might have felt pressure to donate is also under debate. The student spoken to by Nature last April showed no signs of having been coerced by Hwang. During a 28-minute interview, she proudly described how her patriotism and concern for those with spinal injuries had inspired her to donate. Nature was unable to contact the other researcher, who is since thought to have moved to the United States. But according to Roh, she felt obliged to donate after making mistakes early in the experiment that wasted eggs and set the team back by months. I think it's a beautiful story, Roh told Nature, referring to both women's donations.

Can someone define "politically-motivated"?

A couple of weeks ago, I had a ton of fun with the Women's Bioethics Project. They released a report that was titled "God's Bioethics." (and still is tonight, on the front page and on the "news" page, but I keep expecting them to change that).

I received a comment from Linda McDonald Glenn, JD,LLM,, one of the Founding members, supporters and bloggers of the WBP.

Ms. McDonald thinks I over reacted about the "God's Bioethics" report:

was never intended to be politically-motivated, mean-spirited or divisive -- and like you, I'm not big on the "us" vs "them" labels. In fact, I see lots of ways that both conservatives and progressives could potentially work together on issues.

Okay, if it's not political, devisive, or even mean-spirited, why would Ms. Glenn emphasize political divisions, use words such as "overtly religious," etc.?

Perhaps the Women's Project should look at that information above about the Soros and RWJF money that seeded all those end of life and assisted suicide (which, are not all the same) organizations and bioethics centers at major universities - neither the money nor the organizations are "overtly religious" or "conservative."

Housekeeping, new links

I've added some links to the sidebar, changed the look of the blog and am trying to discover the way to widen the posting column. I've also edited the profile to be shorter. More "stuff" and less "about the stuff." (and it should make "jimmy" happy.)

Be sure and check out some of the new links.

Bioethics.com, run by the same people as the website for the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity, has a new blog that is a great resource for up to date bioethics news. I'm so glad that they've started blogging.

Wesley J. Smith's blog is great reading.

I've also added links to two sites that review the history of bioethics. The Consortium on Law and Values in Human in Health, the Environment and the Life Sciences from the University of Minnesota has a Video Archive with seminars and lectures by the pushers and movers of Bioethics since the year 2000. Unfortunately, most of the featured speakers are pro-embryonic stem cells and cloning. (By the way, can you imagine a "pro-life" consortium that puts "Life Sciences" after the Environment?)

The UMN Center for Bioethics program is one of the oldest in the nation. Faculty includes Susan Wolfe, Ronald Cranford and Jeffry Kahn.

That second site, LifeTree.org, details the history of the "right to die" movement, including the support of the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation (millions to National Public telelvision, paid for supplements to the Hastings Report, and "educated" commercial television writers and producers about end of life care) and George Soros who gave well over 15 million dollars in seed money to various organizations that eventually became "Last Acts."

Both Soros and RWJF are responsible for startups of hospices and Bioethics centers at multiple universities and funded many of the legal actions. All that money puts a slightly different slant on The Women's Bioethics Project claims that the big money only goes to what they call "God's Bioethics."

Clones, lies and research

If the Korean veterinarian, Dr. Wu Suk Hwang, will not tell the truth about his procurement of oocytes, what won't he lie about?

From the December 2004 in Science article (sorry, subscription only) on the production of one cell line from over 200 human oocytes:

Fresh oocytes and cumulus cells were donated by healthy women for the express purpose of SCNT stem cell derivation for therapeutic cloning research and its applications. Before beginning any experiments, we obtained approval for this study from the Institutional Review Board on Human Subjects Research and Ethics Committees (Hanyang University Hospital, Seoul, Korea). Donors were fully aware of the scope of our study and signed an informed consent form (a summary of the informed consent form is available in the supporting online text); donors voluntarily donated oocytes and cumulus cells (including DNA) for therapeutic cloning research and its applications only, not for reproductive cloning; and there was no financial payment. A total of 242 oocytes were obtained from 16 volunteers (there were one or two donors for each trial) after ovarian stimulation:

I would like to see those consent forms.

Pay women to donate eggs?

Reading more on that last post on Ronald Green (scroll down, or click here for permanent link) from July 2005 July, 2005,

"What is the point of these bans against paying for eggs? A ban on payment for embryos makes sense. Embryos that are available for stem-cell research are spares remaining from in-vitro fertilization procedures. Whatever effort or expense went into them lies in the past. It also makes sense to prohibit the selling of sperm for research purposes. This is hardly an onerous or risky task.

"But eggs are another matter. Eggs should not be sold, but women who produce eggs for research should be compensated for the time and effort involved. They must undergo a series of painful injections with drugs to stimulate their ovaries and undergo a collection procedure that involves inserting a large needle through the vaginal wall into each ovary. The drugs can cause mood swings, and there are rare but life-threatening risks associated with them. Why would anybody do this without appropriate compensation?"

Hubris, clones, ethics déjà vu

Ronald M. Green joined Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology had a letter to the editor in Nature last week, bemoaning the “fact” that the Koreans had won the “stem cell” “race.” (Correspondence: Bush's policy stopped US gaining stem-cell lead Nature 438, 422 (24 November 2005) (Sorry, subscription only)


Of all the people in the world, religion professor Ronald Green should know about cutting ethical corners for pay.

From the letter:

“Why did the South Koreans win this race despite our early lead?
“In our view, President George W. Bush's restrictive policy on funding stem-cell research was a major factor. SCNT research is expensive— a full research programme costs hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. At that time, ACT was a privately financed company, and from the summer of 2001 on, it was operating in an extremely hostile funding environment, with no hope of federal support. There is no reason to believe that ACT was a special case. Indeed, the stem-cell area as a whole has continued to encounter difficulties in garnering sufficient financial support.”

Talk about irony: complaints about the hostile environment encountered by an industry that’s riddled with questionable ethics for hire, from a man who is responsible for quite a bit of the suspicion. If only ACT had kept quiet about the bovine-human embryo until more was known. If only ACT had kept quiet about their own human cloned embryos until more was known.

If only ACT had kept quiet about the Korean “win” until more was known about their practices of buying oocytes and influencing Ph.D. candidates to donate.
If only Green and ACT could learn the difference between embryonic stem cells and ethical stem cells.

After abortion: 250% increased risk of death for mother

Decreased by half after birth, compared to women who weren't pregnant in the last year.

And none of the mainstream media outlets notice.

There is excellent coverage at RedState.org and Lifesitenews.org.

This new study is out of Finland. Which is a country which has socialized medicine and records allowing the researchers to correlate deaths and pregnancy, abortion.

In contrast, many states, including my home, Texas, have laws mandating information considering post-partum depression.

Try a Google news search. There's a chance there will be more coverage.