Tag Archives: Topic: Bioethics

LifeNews.com: The 3-genetic parent embryo is back in the news. This time it is Australia that wants to attempt to genetically engineer a human embryo to have 3 genetic parents.

Christopher Kaczor at Public Discourse: From its ancient Stoic origins to its modern Kantian formulations, human dignity is an important concept for sound ethical thinking. Doing so requires that we distinguish dignity as attributed, dignity as intrinsic worth, and dignity as flourishing.

LifeNews.com: Turning a blind eye toward both good science and good ethics, the embryonic stem cell and cloning company, Advanced Cell Technology (ACT), has published a very preliminary online report regarding their first two patients injected with embryonic stem cell derivatives.

Christian Concern: The Department of Health has announced plans to consult the public on whether a controversial IVF technique should be used to prevent some hereditary diseases from being transferred from women to their children. | Christian Concern: Government plans for three-parent babies

LifeNews.com: NIH Director Francis Collins has approved four more human embryonic stem cell lines as eligible for federal taxpayer funding. The latest approval brings the total to 146.

News from The Associated Press: A new study of fertility treatment found that women who get three or more embryos have no better odds of having a baby than those who get just two embryos.

News from The Associated Press: The ministry stopped accepting applications for stem cell procedures until July and is implementing a yearlong campaign to halt unauthorized stem cell therapy trials.

BBC : For the first time, scientists have produced monkeys composed of cells taken from separate embryos.

Reuters: Many U.S. fertility clinics don’t tell egg donors that embryos made from their eggs may end up being used in stem cell research, according to a new government survey.

Scientists have made a major breakthrough that could soon see human sperm grown in the laboratory.

There are only four things Alana Stewart knows about her father: he has blonde hair, blue eyes, a college degree, and his assigned number at the sperm bank where he sold half of Alana’s genetic code is 81.

Wesley J. SmithSecondhand Smoke | A First Things Blog: Pro choice and pro life women have come together in coalition to protect women from being exploited for their eggs by Big Biotech. Reason? Women would take all the risks and the companies could make all the money but for the small payments to women to undergo the unnecessary extration procedure.

Ilya Somin at The Volokh Conspiracy: Brooklyn resident Levy Itzhak Rosenbaum recently became the first person convicted of brokering the sale of kidneys in the United States [HT: George Mason law student Michael Mortorano]. The real tragedy here is not what Rosenbaum did, but the fact that organ sales are illegal to begin with. Legalizing them would save thousands of lives every year by increasing the supply of kidneys available to those suffering from organ failure.

ADF Attorney Daniel Blomberg at LifeNews.com: Imagine that medicine allowed doctors to easily and safely remove babies from the womb long before birth and put them in some sort of artificial womb to complete their development. Now ask yourself if this technology would completely remove the market for killing the unborn. Answer? No. Why?

LiveScience: A team of South Korean scientists led by the Hwang Woo-suk – who made headlines in 2005 for falsely claiming to have extracted stem cells from cloned human embryos – has just announced that they have successfully cloned coyotes for the first time. Here are some answers to a few questions you may have about reproductive cloning.

William Carroll at Public Discourse: Modern science does not require us to abandon notions of nature and human nature upon which so much of traditional ethics depends.

SMH.com.au: Serious and fatal diseases such as pancreatic cancer, Parkinson’s disease and diabetes may eventually be treated using stem cells from breast milk following a remarkable discovery at the University of Western Australia.

The European Union’s top court ruled Tuesday that scientists cannot patent stem cell techniques that use human embryos for research purposes, a ruling some scientists said threatens important research since no one could profit from it.

Nancy Valko at Mercatornet.com: Linking the “right to die” with organ donation has opened a terrible Pandora’s Box.

Scientists reported Wednesday that for the first time they used cloning techniques to coax human eggs to generate embryonic stem cells containing the genes of specific patients.

Wesley J. Smith at Secondhand Smoke | A First Things Blog: Penn bioethicist Art Caplan and I have had some vocal disagreements over the years, but we tend to think very similarly about organ transplant issues. Now Art and four other bioethicists have an opinion column in The Lancet calling for a boycott of Chinese scientists over its barbaric human organ market. From “Time For a Boycott of Chinese Science and Medicine Pertaining to Organ Transplantation” . . .

LifeNews.com: The story is about the rising number of what are euphemistically called “twin reductions”: Women who are carrying twins decide to kill one of their unborn children while allowing its sibling to live. This demonic procedure was the unintended but not unforeseeable consequence of reproductive technologies such as in-vitro fertilization.

BBC News (includes video): Doctors at Moorfields Eye hospital in London have been given the go-ahead to carry out Europe’s first clinical trial using human embryonic stem cell.

LifeNews.com: The Scientist has a great article called “Skipping Pluripotency.” What is pluripotency? Pluripotent is a term used to describe a cell that is undifferentiated. A pluripotent cell can become most or all of the cell types in the body.

NY Daily News: The world’s largest sperm bank is telling redheads to keep their semen. Demand for ginger-haired donors is so low that Cryos International says they needn’t bother donating.

LifeNews.com: Yesterday, the Missouri Senate disappointed pro-life advocates when it passed the Missouri Science Innovation & Reinvestment Act (MOSIRA) without adequate pro-life protections.

FRC: Family Research Council (FRC) today praised the passage of the “Weldon Patent Ban” as part of the “America Invents Act” (formerly called the Patent Reform Act) to prevent patenting of human embryos

LifeNews.com: This case, brought before the Court on September 20th 2010, concerns an Italian couple, asymptomatic carriers of cystic fibrosis, wishing to resort to pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) to conceive in vitro and artificially select an embryo that doesn’t carry cystic fibrosis.

ZENIT:

ZENIT: What are the most important subjects in bioethics today?

Haas: From my point of view it is the de-personalization and de-humanization of health services. Human beings are being regarded as lacking rights. Organ donation has become an international business. The same happens with in vitro fertilization that, in the United States, moves close to $5 million every year. Men and women are not being regarded as human beings, but as material to use for scientific experiments, even on some occasions for experiments that, on the surface, have the very good intention of helping others.

O. Carter Snead at Public Discourse: Public officials—especially the President—are obligated to protect the intrinsic equal dignity of all human beings, regardless not only of sex and race, but also without regard to age, size, condition of dependency, vulnerability, or the esteem of others. Abortion and embryo-destructive research are profound and lethal violations of this principle of equality to which the law (and the President) must respond.

LifeNews.com: For those keeping track, late yesterday NIH Director Francis Collins approved four more human embryonic stem cell (hESC) lines for the embryonic stem cell registry.

Skene, Loane, Should Women Be Paid for Donating Their Eggs for Human Embryo Research? (August 3, 2011). Monash Bioethics Review, Vol. 28, No. 4, 2009; U of Melbourne Legal Studies Research Paper No. 552. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1904140

digtriad.com: A debate is raging in the United Kingdom over the prospect of allowing students to sell organs for tuition money.

For the first time, researchers have produced healthy mice offspring using sperm derived from precursor cells generated in vitro.

LifeSiteNews.com: Two prominent Catholic bioethics commentators crossed swords over the morality of adopting frozen embryos, an issue that remains highly contentious as it has been left open by the Vatican.

The New American: James Sherley, one of the plaintiffs in the suit, who uses adult stem cells in his research, was set to file an appeal of the verdict, with the aid of the Alliance Defense Fund, which represented him and Theresa Deisher in the lawsuit. “Americans should not be forced to pay for experiments that destroy human life, have produced no real-world treatments, and violate federal law,” ADF senior counsel Steven Aden said after the verdict. “The law is clear, and we intend to review all of our options for appeal of this decision.”

Daily Kos: Sherley and Deisher can appeal the ruling. The Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative organization that assisted with the lawsuit, said in a statement that its attorneys and other lawyers involved in the case were “weighing all of their options for appeal.”

The court ruled that DNA isolated from the body was eligible for patents because it was “markedly different” in its chemical structure from DNA that exists in the body.

Scientists have created more than 150 human-animal hybrid embryos in British laboratories.

LifeSiteNews.com: For £20 Brits can buy a chance to win a baby in a lottery sponsored by a fertility charity, a move that has been decried by ethicists as just more evidence that children have been reduced to commodities by the artificial reproduction industry.

Singh, Narendra Vikram, Patenting of the Stem Cell and Ethical Issue Involved (December 2, 2008). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1857432

LifeSiteNews.com: After a lengthy process, the French Parliament has adopted a revision of the 1999 bioethics law, introducing several changes that will make embryo research and eugenic prenatal screening easier to perform. However, some of the worst aspects of the law as initially submitted by the government and specialized commissions of the National Assembly and the Senate were finally voted down after protracted discussions.

Christian Newswire (6/24): Today, on behalf of the adult stem researchers it represents, the Jubilee Campaign’s Law of Life Project and their co-counsel at the Alliance Defense Fund and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, following a second remand from the United States Court of Appeals, filed its “supplemental brief” asking the United States District Court to provide summary judgment on each of their clients’ claims based on the National Institute of Health’s clear violation of two separate laws: (1) the Dickey-Wicker Amendment that bars federal funding of any “research in which” human embryos are “knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death;” and, (2) the Administrative Procedure Act that prohibits a government agency, from patently ignoring or prejudging public comments submitted in opposition to unlawful agency action, like NIH has been and is doing in this case. [numerous hyperlinks available at the Christian Newswire site]

LifeSiteNews.com: U.S. scientists reported last week they have been able to develop potentially “self-healing” lasers that could be used in the human body for treating diseases such as cancer. The lasers, however, use human embryonic cells in a controversial experiment that has not yet been approved by the FDA.

LifeSiteNews.com: The Vatican has invested $1 million in a U.S. company, NeoStem, that works with adult stem cells to find cures for disease and injuries. This is the first time the Vatican has entered into an agreement with a private company to advance stem cell research.

LifeNews.com: owever, language in HR 1249, the America Invents Act, a bill pending in the House of Representatives, will codify an important pro-life policy rider included in the federal appropriations bills since 2004.

VIS news – Holy See Press Office: At midday today in the Holy See Press Office a forthcoming international conference on the theme “Adult Stem Cells: Science and the Future of Man and Culture” was presented. The conference, organised by the Science and Faith Department of the Pontifical Council for Culture, is due to be held in the Vatican from 9 to 11 November.

The Guardian: Experts divided on whether ‘deeply complex’ procedure, previously only carried out on animals, is safe for humans

AP: California medical officials have revoked the license of the fertility doctor who helped “Octomom” Nadya Suleman become the mother of 14 children through repeated in vitro treatments.

LifeNews.com: PepsiCo is ignoring criticism from pro-life advocates upset that the company contracts with a research firm that uses fetal cells from babies victimized by abortions to test and produce artificial flavor enhancers.

Eggsploitation Documentary Screening – Phoenix | Center for Arizona Policy: Produced by The Center for Bioethics & Culture, Eggsploitation is a documentary film revealing the risks and costs to young women from the human egg trade. [learn more]

Life News: Dozens of pro-life groups are calling on pro-life Americans to boycott PepsiCo because it has contracted with a company that uses fetal cells from babies victimized by abortions to test and produce artificial flavor enhancers.

Sacramento Bee: A new, first-of-its-kind Seattle in vitro fertilization program can save women 30 percent on the expense of conceiving a child with a donated egg.

LifeNews: TThomas G. Hungar, one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs, which includes the Alliance Defense Fund and the Christian Medical Association, said in 2009 when the lawsuit was filed, “the language of the [Dickey-Wicker] statute is clear” that it “bans public funding for any research that leads to the destruction of human embryos.” “NIH’s attempt to avoid Congress’s command by funding everything but the act of ‘harvesting’ is pure sophistry. The guidelines will result in the destruction of human embryos and are unlawful, unethical, and unnecessary,” he told LifeNews.com at the time. Sam Casey, General Counsel of Advocates International’s Law of Life Project, a public interest legal project involved in the case, pointed out . . .

TopNews.Net.nz: Study results published in the journal “Human Reproduction” discovered that there was a strong link between the number of eggs taken from a woman’s ovaries during an IVF (in-vitro fertilization) cycle and the chances of having a live birth as a result.

Bloomberg: Luis Picado’s mother remembers the day her son thought he had won the lottery. He came home to their tin-roofed cinder-block house in a Managua, Nicaragua, slum and said he’d found a way to escape poverty and start a new life in the United States.

LifeNews: Geron has announced that the second patient has been injected with embryonic stem cell derivatives. This spinal cord injury patient was injected Saturday at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.

LifeNews: A Missouri pro-life group is concerned taxpayers may be on the hook for funding human cloning or embryonic stem cell research and its wants state legislators to do something about it.

Russell Korobkin at the Volokh Conspiracy: The bottom line is that, while last week’s decision preserved the status quo of permitting federal funding for now, it probably did not resolve anything. The strong odds now are that Judge Lamberth will grant the plaintiffs summary judgment in the lawsuit, reiterating his interpretation of Dickey-Wicker Amendment, that the D.C. Circuit will stay the ruling pending appeal, and that all the parties will wait while the D.C. Circuit considers essentially the same issue again.

AP: “The Medical Board of California has heard final arguments about whether “Octomom” Nadya Suleman’s fertility doctor should have his license revoked for allegedly providing substandard care to her and two other patients.”

God Discussion: In August, 2010, President Obama’s lifting of the ban was challenged in federal court in a case argued by the Alliance Defense Fund. In Sherley v. Sebelius, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth said the research likely violated the law against federal funding of embryo destruction.

Polina M. Dostalik, Embryo “adoption”? The Rhetoric, The Law, And The Legal Consequences, 55 N.Y.L. Sch. L. Rev. 867 (2011)

Ryan Sullivan, Pre-Mortem Cryopreservation: Recognizing A Patient’s Right To Die In Order To Live, 14 Quinnipiac Health L.J. 49 (2010)

Sherif Girgis at Public Discourse: December 2010, Sherif Girgis sat down with Arthur Caplan, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and unofficial “dean” of liberal bioethicists, and Robert P. George, a professor at Princeton University and a conservative member of President Bush’s Council on Bioethics, to discuss the current state of bioethics in America.  Today we present the second part of an adaptation of that interview. Part one may be read here.  – Ed.

TheLocal.se: Swedish county health authorities should be allowed to pay for funerals in return for the relatives allowing the donation of the deceased’s organs, Swedish researchers have argued in a new study.

LifeNews: As soon as scientists begin discussing the differences between embryonic stem cells, adult stem cells, induced pluripotent stem cells, and altered nuclear transfer, most non-scientists become overwhelmed by the technicalities and quickly lose their moorings in the ethical and funding debates. This is needless and easily cleared up with a simple analogy.

Sherif Girgis at Public Discourse: People sometimes contrast those who go on evidence, facts, science, and reason, with those who “politicize the science.” But both of you seem to think that besides scientific findings, moral norms have to govern scientific inquiry and medical practice…

UPI: “A relatively quiet but intense struggle in the fedeal courts will decide under what conditions a company can patent the building blocks of life — or in some cases the building blocks of death — for profit.”

LifeSiteNews: Among the worst changes, the text as it now stands permits destructive embryo research. Since the 2001 revision of the law such research was prohibited in principle, with exemptions for “therapeutic” reasons authorized by the French Biomedical Agency. In the new regime it would be authorized in principle, albeit with some safeguards. This marks a major symbolic shift: human embryos would be considered as laboratory material as such.

AP: “An Ohio woman who gave birth to another woman’s baby after a fertility clinic mix-up has announced she and her husband are expecting twins through a surrogate mother.”

LifeSiteNews: for Practical Ethics claims that humanity has a “moral obligation” to use in vitro fertilization (IVF) to select the most intelligent embryos for the good of society, with the obvious implication that the less intelligent “surplus” embryos should simply be destroyed.

Japanese researchers cultivated small pieces of tissue from the testes of baby mice on a gel bathed in nutrients. After several weeks they collected viable sperm from the tissue.

AP: “Asch and fertility doctor Jose Balmaceda are charged with stealing the eggs and embryos of dozens of women being treated at the UC Irvine Center for Reproductive Health.”

David Prentice writes at LifeNews: So, does the Minnesota Medical Association support the idea of gestating human clones to birth? That’s what their press release a few days ago suggested. But their 2010 policy book states that while MMA supports cloning human embryos for experiments, MMA opposes gestating cloned human embryos to birth (see item 560.13).  So which is it?

CBC: Canada might not have enough sperm donors without turning to other countries, a new report on the country’s ban on paying donors suggests. The federal government banned the sale of human eggs and sperm under Canada’s Assisted Human Reproductive Act in 2004.