Free Republic

Scientists are keeping aborted fetal ovaries alive in order to scavenge their eggs. From the Daily News story: Scientists are ready to plunder the ovaries of aborted babies for eggs to use in IVF treatment. Experiments have taken the process almost to completion, it emerged yesterday. They raise the nightmare prospect of a child whose biological mother has never been born. The news, from a scientific conference in Madrid, was greeted with widespread revulsion at how far science is testing ethical frontiers. Experts warned of appalling emotional and biological problems. But fertility doctors say the development could ease a worldwide...

Good grief! A Maryland state legislator has filed a bill that would allow surrogate decision makers to “donate” kidneys and liver lobes. From HB 449: THIS SUBSECTION APPLIES ONLY TO A PATIENT WHO HAS BEEN CERTIFIED UNDER § 5–606(B) OF THIS SUBTITLE TO BE IN A PERSISTENT 8 VEGETATIVE STATE. (3) A PERSON AUTHORIZED TO MAKE HEALTH CARE DECISIONS FOR ANOTHER UNDER THIS SECTION MAY AUTHORIZE THE DONATION OF A NONVITAL ORGAN IF THE DONATION IS BASED ON: (I) THE WISHES OF THE PATIENT AS PREVIOUSLY EXPRESSED BY THE PATIENT; OR (II) A DETERMINATION BY THE SURROGATE THAT THE DONATION...

White House memos from 1997, when Elena Kagan was a top domestic policy advisor to President Clinton, show that Kagan -- nominated to the Supreme Court by President Obama -- recommended that the Clinton administration permit cloning of human embryos for research purposes. Writing just months after Scottish researchers had announced the birth of a cloned sheep, Kagan and another Clinton aide recommended that the president announce a ban on cloning that would lead to the birth of human infants, but emphasized that the policy "would not ban the creation of cloned embryos for research purposes.

IS CHINA harvesting organs from Falun Gong practitioners -- who are killed in the process? David Kilgour, a former Canadian member of Parliament, and Canadian human rights attorney David Matas admit that they cannot prove or disprove allegations that China has killed thousands of Falun Gong practitioners in order to harvest their organs, but they fear and believe it is happening. So they wrote in a report (investigation.redirectme.net) released this month for the Coalition to Investigate the Persecution of the Falun Gong in China. China denies the allegations. An embassy spokesman reminded me that U.S. officials toured a site in...

PRO-LIFE CHALLENGEBiomedical Ethics The Radical Depth and Scope of the Cloning Agenda By Wesley J. Smith Ever since embryonic stem cells were first extracted from human embryos in 1998, biotechnologists, abetted by a compliant media, have promised they would soon lead to miraculous medical cures for degenerative diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. First, we were told, all that would be needed were stem cell lines extracted from "surplus" embryos "left over" from in vitro fertilization procedures, a procedure that destroys the embryo. Then, when fears were raised about auto-immune tissue rejection, we were told that what we really...