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Almost anyone with a high school education can correctly answer the question “When does human life begin?” by responding “at conception” or at “fertilization” of a human egg by a sperm cell. While we may not understand, or only vaguely recall, the precise process by which an egg and sperm combine to create a new unique human being, this basic truth about human life falls into the category of things we can’t not know. Yet today, many educated people who do know better assert that human life begins at some later stage of development.They arbitrarily push forward the starting point...

The Embryo’s New Clothes: A Modern Fairy Tale by Steve Kellmeyer 06/24/04 “People need a fairy tale,” said Ronald D.G. McKay, a stem cell researcher at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, “Maybe that’s unfair, but they need a story line that’s relatively simple to understand.” The Promise In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, a creative man needed a patron, a rich nobleman who was willing to pay an artist’s upkeep so as to give the artist time to create. Long the backbone of artisans, patronage has only recently become the backbone of technologists. Sadly, in the...

For Cindy Nooney's 3-year-old twin boys, playing with the Thomas the Train set at their local bookstore in Southern California is a major thrill. Jack and Sam push Thomas, Arthur and friends down the track, they run around the table, jump up and down — and, of course, they squeeeaal. Nooney expects as much in the children's section of the store. But on a recent afternoon, she was surprised by an employee who confronted her, calling her darling Jack a tyrant. "He was a little loud but this is a children's section," says Nooney. "They run a noisy, cavernous bookstore...

WASHINGTON (AP) President Bush has issued the first veto of his presidency, rejecting a bill to expand federal research on stem cells obtained from embryos.

After nearly five years of dealing with all the terrible and often absurd abuses of free speech in higher education, I am a hard person to shock, but hats off to professor Sally Jacobsen of Northern Kentucky University (NKU) for showing me the most perverted inversion of the concept of free speech I have seen in a long time. Jacobsen, a professor at NKU, invited students in one of her classes to “to express their freedom-of-speech rights to destroy [an anti-abortion] display if they wished to.” The anti-abortion display had been erected by an NKU student group with permission from...

Frederick T. Zugibe, M.S., M.D., Ph.D., FCAP,  FACC,  FAAFS      HOMECONTACT FORENSIC PATHOLOGY & MEDICINE Biography Publications News Public Health Psychotropic  Drugs Study   CRUCIFIXION and SHROUD STUDIES Crucifixion & Shroud Involvement Barbet Revisited Man of the Shroud was Washed Texas Lecture Paris  Lecture Turin 2000 Lecture MISCELLANEOUS: The Code for Human Life                                                          THE CODE FOR HUMAN LIFE  [Reprinted from the Catholic Answer 9: 40-45,1996]     A fertilized human egg at the moment of Conception, is the opinion of the creator that a human life at that instant, must begin.... F. Zugibe    ...

Determining at what point life begins in the womb. To resolve the issue, then, let us take a look at life as it is born into the world. The new baby, most of the time, is said to be "alive," depending upon various and sundry "vital- signs, "Vital" from "vivus" being LAtin for "life, living." Yet, we do not conclude that the baby "became" alive at the moment of birth, for then we must concern ourselves with the prebirth "kicking" of the babe in the womb. Is it alive? Or is it just "thinking about life to come? ("For lo,...