Free Republic

JEFFERSON CITY, MO. — Michael J. Fox hopes that research on human embryos will help him overcome Parkinson’s disease, but new scientific findings may give him pause. As controversy raged over the actor’s TV ads promoting Senate candidates who back the embryo-killing research, scientists came out with new findings — research using human embryonic stem cells to treat Parkinson’s disease produce tumors in research animals. Dr. Steven Goldman and a University of Rochester Medical Center team, in a study released Oct. 22, showed that symptoms of the disease decreased, but tumors grew in the animals’ brains, according to the report...

A scandal has erupted in South Korea over human-cloning researcher Woo Suk Hwang, bringing into sharp relief some questions about the “therapeutic cloning” agenda that have been ignored for too long. In February 2004, scientific colleagues hailed Dr. Hwang as the first researcher to prove he had used the “somatic-cell-nuclear-transfer” technique (the same technique used to clone “Dolly” the sheep) to create cloned human embryos. That first effort, starting with 242 human eggs donated by 16 women, produced 30 embryos that survived to the “blastocyst” (one-week old) stage, and yielded just one embryonic-stem-cell line. By May 2005 he had improved...

July 19, 2006, 8:39 a.m. Anti-Life, Anti-ScienceA Castle of confusion. By Richard M. Doerflinger It all seemed so reasonable and straightforward. Congress’s warring factions in the stem-cell debate had agreed on a civilized plan for moving the issue forward. The U.S. Senate would vote on three bills: the bill to fund stem-cell research requiring the destruction of human embryos, already approved by the House last year; a bill to ban the use of fetal tissue from “fetus farming” (implanting human embryos in human or animal wombs in order to develop them further and harvest their body parts); and a...

                                                                    November 12, 2004 Dear Diocesan Pro-Life Directors and         Directors of State Catholic Conferences,             I am very sorry to have to tell you that yesterday Richard Doerflinger, Deputy Director of the Pro-Life Secretariat, and his wife Lee Ann, learned that their young son Thomas had been killed in Iraq.    Thomas was serving in the Army and had been sent to Iraq about two weeks ago.  According to news reports, he was killed by small arms fire during combat in Mosul.             Today, Msgr. William Fay, General Secretary of the bishops' conference, will offer Mass for Thomas and all of the Doerflinger family.   ...

Pope John Paul II Affirms Obligation to Feed Patients in the "Vegetative" State By Richard DoerflingerOn March 20, speaking to participants in an international congress on the "vegetative" state, Pope John Paul II profoundly changed the worldwide debate on how to respond to this condition. He issued the first clear and explicit papal statement on the obligation to provide food and water for patients in a "persistent vegetative state" (PVS). Pope John Paul II profoundly changed the worldwide debate when he issued the first clear and explicit papal statement on the obligation to provide food and water for patients in...

Schiavo autopsy does not alter church's pro-life stand, official says WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The autopsy results on Terri Schindler Schiavo are irrelevant to the church's stand in support of her human dignity and against removal of her feeding tube in March, a Catholic pro-life official said June 16. "Our position was not based on predictions about her likelihood of recovery," said Richard M. Doerflinger, deputy director of the U.S. bishops' Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities, in a telephone interview from Chicago. "It was based on her dignity as a human person." Schiavo, 41, died March 31, nearly two weeks after her...

Life Issues Forum Farming Humans for Fun and Profitby Richard M. DoerflingerJanuary 20, 2004 "Farming” fetuses for body parts. Human/animal hybrids. Putting unborn humans in animal wombs. Buying and selling human embryos. Patenting human beings. Chapter headings for a science-fiction potboiler? No. Just a typical day at the office for members of the President’s Council on Bioethics. On January 16, The President’s Council released a draft report that deserves attention from all Americans concerned about the use and abuse of science. Its title, “Biotechnology and Public Policy: Biotechnologies Affecting the Beginnings of Human Life,” is far from exciting; but its...