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EuroStemCell scientists at the Pasteur Institute in Paris have demonstrated one of the body's most sophisticated ways of regulating the genetic material of stem cells. Their findings, published in Nature Cell Biology, show for the first time the mechanism that adult muscle stem cells use to protect their DNA from mutations. Understanding this has important implications for cancer research, the study of gene regulation, and ultimately growing stem cells of therapeutic potential in the laboratory. When a cell divides, its DNA is duplicated and each resulting daughter cell inherits one copy of the DNA. Over time, errors arising during the...

Seattle, Jun. 12, 2006 (CNA) - A relatively new method of regulating fertility is catching on around the world.  CycleBeads are 95 percent effective and, in themselves, do not conflict with Catholic teachings related to reproduction and fertility. The CycleBeads, which consist of 32 beads in three colors, is a fertility awareness-based method that helps plan or prevent pregnancy naturally. Victoria Jennings, an anthropologist and director of Georgetown's Institute for Reproductive Health, believes women are looking for non-hormonal, non-invasive ways to control their fertility. She and other researchers at Georgetown University conducted a scientific trial of the beads they call...

"So, now you are finished, right"? The politely asked question came after my wife told a woman co-worker the ultrasound results. Our next baby is a girl. We just found out. This co-worker knew we had a boy last summer. So, I guess she has figured we have done our reproductive quota, and she wanted to know if we'd play by the rules, and not welcome any more children. Now needless to say, I am thrilled about this miracle, as is Mrs. Gb. But even within the culture wars, we were not expecting, so soon, such a question. We don't...

Summer 2006 issue - Three years out of graduate school, Julia Derek has twelve kids. Or so she thinks. As a penniless senior at George Mason University, she spotted an ad in The Washington Post from a couple looking to buy a young woman’s eggs. Ten years, 12 donations, $50,000, and one successfully financed postgraduate degree later, Derek, now the author of “Confessions of a Serial Egg Donor,” explains the appeal of egg donation: “You’re doing a good thing, it feels good that people want you, it’s cool to spread your genes…It seems like a great thing to make money...

Madrid, Feb. 17, 2006 (CNA) - Reacting to passage of a new law on assisted reproduction by Spain’s House of Representatives, which would allow genetic selection, cloning and the selling of human embryos, the spokesman for the Bishops’ Conference of Spain, Father Juan Antonio Martinez Camino, said the measure was “very troubling” in its consequences for respect for human life.Speaking to Europa Press, Father Martinez said the new law “opens the door to human cloning, as it only prohibits reproductive cloning and therefore allows therapeutic cloning.”  According to the Spanish priest, the law would also authorize eugenics, that is, “the...

ROME, January 31, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The UK Ambassador to the Vatican got an earful from a Vatican Cardinal at a Rome conference ten days ago for refusing to acknowledge facts about fertility decline and its serious implications.Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, the President of the Pontifical Council on the Family was the keynote speaker at the conference titled "The Family in the New Economy: Reflections on the Margins on Centesimus Annus".  The conference, sponsored by the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, was also addressed by Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, a Senior Fellow in Economics at the...

PROVINCETOWN-- Its year-round population declining and its economy sagging like a wet beach bag, Provincetown has a new worry: It's getting old. With its colorful art galleries and Bohemian personalities, Provincetown has long been a mecca for gay travelers. But town officials worry that its population is graying and that it needs younger visitors and their disposable incomes to pump up the local economy. In the last year, the Provincetown tourism office has begun running flashy ads in gay and lesbian magazines that cater to readers under 40, such as Instinct, Genre, Curve, 411 Magazine, and Out Traveler. It has...

Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday praised large families and called for countries to approve legislation and other incentives to help them. "Without children there is no future," Benedict said.The pope addressed his remarks to Italian pilgrims present at his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square, including more than 2,000 members of the Italian Numerous Families Association."It is my hope that further adequate social and legislative interventions be promoted to protect and support the more numerous families, which constitute a richness and a hope for the entire nation," the pope said.Recent European Union statistics put the average number of children...

Every once in a while, a case comes along that makes me truly grateful to be a Catholic. Our Holy Mother Church has been looking out for us and trying to keep us out of trouble, even when we chafe at her constraints. But when I see the trouble people get themselves into, I am grateful for our Holy Mother’s foresight. That is how I felt when I read the California Supreme Court’s ruling on the April 22 case, K.M v. E.G. Perhaps you don’t remember a case by that name, but surely you remember the headlines: “California Establishes Lesbian...

Last Updated: Thursday, 8 September 2005, 16:30 GMT 17:30 UK Embryo with two mothers approved Image of cloning The aim is to get healthy offspring free of inherited genetic disorders. UK scientists have won permission to create a human embryo that will have genetic material from two mothers. The Newcastle University team will transfer genetic material created when an egg and sperm fuse into another woman's egg. The groundbreaking work aims to prevent mothers from passing certain genetic diseases on to their unborn babies. Such diseases arise from DNA found outside the nucleus, and thus inherited separately from DNA in...

By Clive Cookson, Science Editor Published: August 31 2005 18:46 | Last updated: August 31 2005 18:46 The first detailed genetic comparison between humans and chimpanzees shows that 96 per cent of the DNA sequence is identical in the two species. But there are significant differences, particularly in genes relating to sexual reproduction, brain development, immunity and the sense of smell. An international scientific consortium publishes the genome of the chimpanzee, the animal most closely related to homo sapiens on Thursday in the journal Nature. It is the fourth mammal to have its full genome sequenced, after the mouse, rat...

JEFFERSON CITY - Some Republican legislators want to charge unwed fathers thousands of dollars for hospital birth costs incurred by low-income mothers on Medicaid. "But the last time I checked, it takes two people to make a baby. And there is some responsibility, not just for child support, but for the cost of bringing that child successfully into the world," said Shields, R-St. Joseph. Medicaid pays for 43 percent of the births in Missouri. At an average cost of $3,286 a birth, the tab hit $120.6 million last year. Nearly two-thirds of the moms on Medicaid are unmarried. Critics say...

MADRID, July 14, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Critics of the movement of the new Spanish government to liberalize the country might be forgiven for thinking that the real goal is to radically de-Catholicize the country. The list of initiatives taken by the Zapatero socialists could have been lifted straight from the Catholic Catechism’s list of the most popular modern sins. With over 80% of the country still claiming to belong to the Catholic Church, and with Spain’s recent history of anti-Catholic Marxist pogroms before the Franco regime, the impression becomes even stronger. Last month the world was awed by the millions...

NEW YORK, February 3, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - At the United Nations, the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) is pushing the government of Samoa to legalize abortion and force more women out of their traditional family roles and into work and political life. CEDAW issued a press release January 24, in which it complained that, despite having set up a Ministry for Women’s Affairs, the role of married women in Samoan society was too traditional and mostly oriented towards family life. It said not enough women run for political office, and that abortion is still illegal despite...

How do these people reproduce? Do they have the capacity for love? Why doesn't logic pertain to their philosophy?

SCIENTISTS last night claimed to have made a major breakthrough in overcoming opposition to stem cell research by creating human embryos which cannot develop into babies. The so-called "ethical" embryos have been created by using an enzyme dubbed the "spark of life" which tricks human eggs into believing they have been fertilised even without the presence of sperm. Stem cells from the embryos can turn into different kinds of tissue and scientists believe that with the right chemical cues they could produce replacement tissue for patients suffering degenerative brain illnesses such as Parkinson’s disease as well as heart damage. Dr...

LITTLE ROCK, Ark., Nov. 19 - With its sleek horizontal form hovering at the edge of the Arkansas River, the new William J. Clinton Presidential Center has been called by promoters a "bridge to the 21st century," a trite allusion to one of the former president's favorite themes. Locals snicker that it looks like an enormous double-wide trailer. Actually, its best elements fall somewhere between those two extremes. Designed by James Polshek and Richard Olcott of the New York-based firm Polshek Partnership, the library has moments of genuine architectural power. Its sleek cantilevered form thrusts out aggressively toward the river,...

A 32-year-old woman in Belgium has become the first woman ever to give birth after having ovarian tissue removed, frozen and then implanted back in her body, doctors are reporting. The patient had the tissue removed in 1997 in hopes of preserving her fertility because she had Hodgkin's lymphoma, a type of cancer, and was about to undergo chemotherapy with drugs likely to damage her ovaries and cause infertility. She and her doctors hoped that once she was cured, the ovarian tissue could be thawed and returned to her abdomen to produce eggs. The strategy apparently worked. The woman, Ouarda...

A state appellate court pondered the claims of two women to be mothers of the same children -- one donated the eggs, the other carried them to term, and both raised the twins together -- and decided the birth mother was the only intended legal parent. In a ruling made public Tuesday, the Court of Appeal panel in San Francisco applied principles from a decade-old surrogate-motherhood case and said the deciding factor was the couple's intent before birth. Despite acting as a co-parent for most of the children's lives, the egg donor had agreed, both orally and in writing, that...

E-mail Author Author Archive Send to a Friend <% printurl = Request.ServerVariables("URL")%> Print Version April 05, 2004, 8:33 a.m. The Doctor Is InThe head of the president&#8217;s bioethics commission on assisted reproduction, cloning, council critics & more. Q&A by Kathryn Jean Lopez On Thursday, the President's Council on Bioethics issued a its latest report, "Reproduction and Responsibility: The Regulation of New Biotechnologies." Dr. Leon Kass, head of the commission — who is a medical doctor, a professor on leave from the University of Chicago, and currently a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and author of books including Life,...