Free Republic

Joe Biden’s comment today, suggesting some contradiction between support for those born with developmental disabilities and opposition to embryo-destructive research is among his more appalling and insulting gaffes to date. As CBS reports it, Biden said: "I hear all this talk about how the Republicans are going to work in dealing with parents who have both the joy, because there's joy to it as well, the joy and the difficulty of raising a child who has a developmental disability, who were born with a birth defect. Well guess what folks? If you care about it, why don't you support stem...

Two former Philadelphia funeral directors on Tuesday admitted to selling cadavers to a ring that cut them up and sold the body parts to hospitals for implants. Gerald Garzone and his brother Louis Garzone pleaded guilty to charges that they conspired with others to take bones, skin and organs from 244 bodies in their funeral homes between February 2004 and September 2005. They were part of a scheme that plundered 1,077 bodies in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania without the permission of relatives in an operation that netted the conspirators $3.8 million. One of the bodies belonged to Alistair...

MPs have voted to allow the creation of "frankenstein" embyros for research into tackling diseases. In the first of a series of free votes on the most controversial aspects of the Human Fertility and Embryology Bill, 336 MPs voted against the amendment to ban all use of human-animal embryos. Gordon Brown had encouraged members of all parties to halt the amendment and Tory leader David Cameron also voted against it.

Transplanting brain cells produced from human embryonic stem cells helped fix stroke damage in the brains of rats, according to scientists who hope to test the same thing in people within about five years. Researchers have been looking for ways to repair the brain damage from a stroke, which can cause permanent disability. In a study published on Tuesday, researchers at Stanford University School of Medicine in California reported that treatment involving human embryonic stem cells may be a solution. The transplanted cells helped repair the stroke damage and enabled the rats to recover lost function in front legs weakened...

A scientist has achieved a world first... by cloning himself. In a breakthrough certain to provoke an ethical furore, Samuel Wood created embryo copies of himself by placing his skin cells in a woman's egg. The embryos were the first to be made from cells taken from adult humans. Although they survived for only five days and were smaller than a pinhead, they are seen as a milestone in the quest for treatments for diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. But critics fear the technology could be exploited by mavericks to clone babies and accused the scientists of reducing the...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Scientists in California say they have produced embryos that are clones of two men, a potential step toward developing scientifically valuable stem cells. The new report documents embryos made with ordinary skin cells. But it's not the first time human cloned embryos have been made. In 2005, for example, scientists in Britain reported using embryonic stem cells to produce a cloned embryo. It matured enough to produce stem cells, but none were extracted. Stem cells weren't produced by the new embryos either, and because of that, experts reacted coolly to the research. "I found it difficult...

London - Prime Minister Gordon Brown yesterday threw his weight behind a move to allow hospitals to remove organs from dead patients without explicit consent. Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, Mr. Brown said such a move would save thousands of lives and that he hopes such a system can start this year. The proposals would mean consent for organ donation after death would be automatically presumed, unless individuals had opted out of a national register or family members objected.

A U.S. Coast Guard officer who was denied a religious exemption from taking a Hepatitis A vaccination has filed a lawsuit against his military service. The basis of Officer Joseph J. Healy's suit is that the vaccination would conflict with his Catholic beliefs.All active duty Coast Guard members have to be vaccinated with one of two Hepatitis A vaccines, both of which are derived from cells taken from the lung tissue of babies who were aborted at 14 weeks gestation, according to Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), which is representing Healy. That is where his objection to the vaccination comes in....

Opening a new front in their assault on abortion, activists in half a dozen states are preparing ballot referendums that would grant "personhood" and constitutional rights to embryos from the moment of conception. The drive is under way in Colorado, where activists have begun gathering signatures for an initiative, and Georgia, where the Legislature will take up the issue when it reconvenes in January. Abortion opponents in Montana, Oregon, Mississippi and Michigan are among those considering similar measures. The new strategy takes an idea that has been central to the pro-life movement - that human life begins when an egg...

Now that biologists in Oregon have reported using cloning to produce a monkey embryo and extract stem cells, it looks more plausible than before that a human embryo will be cloned and that a cloned human will be born some day. But not necessarily in the Americas or Europe. While some critics have been fretting about the morality of stem cell research and genetic engineering, prominent Western scientists have been going to Asia, like the geneticists Nancy Jenkins and Neal Copeland, who left the National Cancer Institute in the United States and moved last year to Singapore. Asia offers researchers...

The scientist who helped ignite cultural and political controversy with the use of embryos in stem-cell research believes his new discovery – using ordinary adult skin cells – means the war is virtually over. "A decade from now, this will be just a funny historical footnote," James A. Thomson told the New York Times in an interview. Thomson's laboratory at the University of Wisconsin was one of two that announced Tuesday a new way to turn ordinary human skin cells into what appear to be embryonic stem cells without using a human embryo. The technique involves adding four genes to...

Last winter, two female Komodo dragons at separate zoos in England gave their keepers big surprises. With no contact from any male, each of the giant lizards laid a clutch of viable eggs, some of which hatched healthy young (SN: 12/23/06, p. 403). The events made the news because they were the first known examples of the species reproducing by the asexual process of parthenogenesis, or virgin birth. SELF-STARTER. A woman's eggs keep a spare set of chromosomes inside a small pouch called a polar body (arrow) until a sperm delivers the paternal set. Scientists can spur the egg to...

Jim Livingston never gave much thought to the bone transplanted in his neck until that Sunday afternoon when his doctor called to tell him about the recall."Do they want it back?" he asked, half-jokingly.Quickly it became clear that this was no laughing matter.Bone allegedly stolen from a corpse had been used in Livingston's neck to relieve the pain of a ruptured disk.With that bit of news, the 44-year-old Weatherford father joined hundreds of others nationwide who are living with the knowledge that they carry bones and tissue taken illegally from cadavers in what has become a bizarre tale of selling...

Plans to allow British scientists to create human-animal embryos are expected to be approved tomorrow by the government's fertility regulator. The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority published its long-awaited public consultation on the controversial research yesterday, revealing that a majority of people were "at ease" with scientists creating the hybrid embryos.Researchers want to create hybrid embryos by merging human cells with animal eggs, in the hope they will be able to extract valuable embryonic stem cells from them. The cells form the basic building blocks of the body and are expected to pave the way for revolutionary therapies for diseases...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has drawn guffaws from the pro-life community for comments saying that embryonic stem cell research, which involves the destruction of days-old human embryos, is a "gift from God." Her remarks came after the House approved a bill to force Americans to fund it. "Science is a gift of God to all of us, and science has taken us to a place that is biblical in its power to cure... And that is embryonic stem cell research," Pelosi said.Her comments produced an immediate reaction from pro-life groups, including Tony Perkins the head...

STOCKHOLM, May 28, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Swedish officials have granted permission under a new law for three families to create “saviour sibling” embryos to be used to obtain stem cells for treatment of seriously ill children. The families will have embryos created in vitro, screened for desired genetic traits and implanted. If the children survive to birth, they will be used to produce a transplant of healthy stem cells from the umbilical cord and placenta. Sweden’s new law follows the broad use of genetic testing of embryos, called preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD). Doctors now commonly offer the procedure for embryos...

Archbishop Raymond Burke made it to the Fox Theatre Saturday — but only as a punch line. When Bob Costas, the evening's host, walked onto the stage he scanned the crowd, gazing into the back rows of the upper balcony before breaking the prolonged silence."All right," Costas quipped. "I guess the archbishop is not showing up."Last week, Burke resigned from the board of the Cardinal Glennon Children's Medical Center Foundation because Crow — a vocal supporter of embryonic stem cell research — was scheduled to headline the annual fundraiser and concert. "Sheryl Crow made it clear that she is coming...

Say you're a woman who wants to have fertility treatment but can't afford the cost, which can total many thousands of dollars. What if you could get the treatment at a substantially reduced rate by agreeing to donate half the eggs you produce for stem-cell research? Interested? British women may get a crack at that deal in a few months, under a plan pursued by Dr. Alison Murdoch of Newcastle University. This concept, which resembles a strategy sometimes used to get eggs for fertility treatment, is just one of several new efforts to boost the supply of human eggs needed...

Boston, MA (LifeNews.com) -- A black Massachusetts Institute of Technology stem cell researcher who doesn't support human cloning says he is planning a hunger strike for next February if the prestigious college doesn't reverse its decision to deny him tenure. Dr. James L. Sherley, an associate professor of biological engineering, says he is a victim of racism. Sherley has been an outspoken advocate against human cloning -- including the kind of therapeutic cloning his colleagues and other scientists want to use to create and destroy human embryos for their stem cells. He has been fighting for tenure at MIT for...

Healthy new-born babies may have been killed in Ukraine to feed a flourishing international trade in stem cells, evidence obtained by the BBC suggests. Disturbing video footage of post-mortem examinations on dismembered tiny bodies raises serious questions about what happened to them. Ukraine has become the self-styled stem cell capital of the world. There is a trade in stem cells from aborted foetuses, amid unproven claims they can help fight many diseases. But now there are claims that stem cells are also being harvested from live babies. The BBC has spoken to mothers from the city of Kharkiv who say...