The Christian Post > World|Mon, Jan. 09 2012 05:31 PM EDT

By Jeff Schapiro | Christian Post Reporter

Barry and Anne Watson were united nine years ago as husband and wife, but a lot has changed since then. After Barry began pursuing a sex change, the U.K. couple renewed their wedding vows last year and reaffirmed their commitment to one another, this time as wife and wife.

Barry, who now goes by the name of Jayne, told the Sunday Mirror that during a rough patch in their marriage, Anne actually thought he was cheating on her with another woman, when in fact he wanted to be a woman himself. Though Anne was “furious” to learn that Barry wanted to undergo a sex change at first, Jayne explained, she later conceded.

 "Anne came to accept me for who I wanted to be and love me as Jayne. Renewing our vows seemed the perfect way to tell the world how happy we are with our new lives," said Jayne.

 As a child, Barry wore his mother's skirts and dresses while she was away. Later in life he would drive to a place where no one knew him just so he could wear women's clothes in public without being noticed.

Barry began dating women so that he would fit in, and in 1995 he met Anne. He was "totally attracted to Anne" when they first met, and after six months they moved into a house together in Halifax, West Yorkshire. They were married in 2002, but that didn't put an end to his identity issues.

"When Anne left the house I’d dress in a skirt and pearls, and on Internet chat forums I’d pose as a girl," said Jayne.

In 2008, he finally confessed to Anne that he wanted a sex change.

"I couldn’t accept it to begin with," Anne told the Sunday Mirror. "The first time I saw Jayne wearing a dress I started hacking at it with scissors. But slowly I realized that even though my husband wanted to become female, my feelings had not changed."

In order to help the transformation, Jayne took female hormones – which helped to reduce body hair and soften her skin. In preparation for the renewal of their vows, Jayne and Anne went dress shopping together, and both of them had a bouquet at the ceremony.

Anne says she "grieved" over the loss of Barry, but is happy to "sit and giggle and talk about hair, clothes and make-up" with Jayne.

"I still love the same person whether they’re called Barry or Jayne... even though she does drive me mad when she steals my clothes without asking me!" said Anne.

Photos of Jayne's transformation can be viewed on the Sunday Mirror's website.

Denise Shick, the founder of Help4Families, says that it is not unusual for a transgender person to still have feelings for his wife, although it is uncommon for the wife of a transgender person to stick around. Many women, whose husbands struggle with gender identity and want to pursue a sex change, fear they might be in a lesbian relationship, Shick told The Christian Post on Monday.

"To them, of course, when they said their wedding vows it was to the man that they love," she explained. "So it really takes a twisted turn when indeed husbands ask the wives to stay with them while they're transitioning and afterward. But that is a big struggle that wives have...is how they look at that relationship. And they just can't emotionally or spiritually go there."

Help4Families, an organization based in Waynesville, N.C., is dedicated to helping individuals struggling with Gender Identity Disorders, and their families, by introducing them to a support network that includes others who have struggled with the same issues.

Shick's father was a cross dresser, the organization's website states, and prior to his death, she found out he also had been in a homosexual relationship. Initially she viewed her father's struggle as "disgusting," "embarrassing" and "shameful," she says, but she now realizes those who struggle with gender identity issues need love just like everyone else.

 "The most difficult thing for us to do sometimes when it’s an issue that we're uncomfortable with...is to love them. Love them right where they are," she said.

In order for Christians to help individuals struggling with a Gender Identity Disorder, Shick says, they must lend an ear to their problems and become a trustworthy friend.

"They're going to need somebody to confide in and they're going to want that because they have that need just like any of us do. Love them where they're at, and walk along side of them in truth and grace. That doesn't mean that we have to jeopardize our faith or what we believe is right or wrong," she said.

She later added, "Again it's just so much loving them where they're at, and bringing them into relationship, and relationship with Christ. Because ultimately Christ is the one that's going to have to mend their hearts, and to take them through...the difficult journey."

http://www.c-fam.org/fridayfax/volume-14/homosexual-lobby-group-funded-mostly-by-governments.html

By Austin Ruse

WASHINGTON, DC, January 6 (C-FAM) European human rights lawyer J.C. von Krempach has taken a close look at the funding stream of the International Gay and Lesbian Association – Europe (ILGA) and concluded that most of their money comes from governments. Writing in the foreign policy blog Turtle Bay and Beyond, von Krempach found a vast majority of ILGA’s funds come from just two governmental entities, the European Commission and the Dutch government.

ILGA is an advocacy group promoting homosexual rights. They were notoriously denied UN accreditation for years because of their connection to groups that promote pedophilia. The NGO Committee of the UN Economic and Social Council consistently rejected ILGA until the Economic and Social Council, led by European countries, overruled their decision.

Among the requirements for UN NGO accreditation is “the major portion of the organization's funds should be derived from contributions from national affiliates, individual members, or other non-governmental components."

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) accredited to the United Nations must show actual people or non-profits, such as foundations, fund them. The UN holds that if their money comes mostly from governments that would make them governmental entities.

The UN included “civil society” to represent people independent from governmental intrusion, not to be an arm of government or a deceptive front for political officials. “Civil society” is comprised of voluntary social relationships and civic organizations and institutions, distinct from the state and market.

Von Krempach discovered that in the year just ended, the European Commission, an intergovernmental entity, provided fully 68% of ILGA’s budget. The Dutch government provided an additional €50,000 bringing ILGA’s governmental funding up to 71%. The rest of ILGA’s funding comes from left-wing donors George Soros, Sigrid Rausing, and one anonymous donor.

Von Krempach also looked at the organization’s budget forecast for 2012 and found a total income of €1,950,000 of which €1 million come from the European Commission and €334,000 come from the Dutch government. Von Krempach writes, “This raises questions with regard to ILGA-Europe’s accreditation to the UN Economic and Social Council.”

Von Krempach also points out the anomaly of the European Commission being the largest sole funding source for a group set up to lobby the European Commission and the European Parliament. He says this is basically the European Institutions lobbying itself.

In light of this new information, it is expected the UN NGO Committee will take up ILGA’s accreditation once more. There is a great deal of bad blood at the UN on the question of the homosexual agenda. European nations are forcing extremist homosexual groups upon the UN NGO Committee. Other governments have taken up the cause of making homosexual activity a human right enforced by international law.

A document called the Yogyakarta Principles, written in part by UN bureaucrats, claims that “sexual orientation and gender identity” are already part of international law. A solid bloc of 80+ nations consistently stops this phantom re-interpretation of UN treaties from actually happening.

In recent weeks the US government announced that advancing the homosexual agenda would be one of its top foreign policy priorities, directing all US government entities that do business overseas to make this agenda a priority.

The Weekend Australian 2011 12 31 – 2012 01 01 Page 10

ORLANDO, FLORIDA: They fell in love, moved in together and had a baby girl.  Now they are fighting over who should raise the child.  But unlike most couples, they are two women.  One donated the egg. The other had it implanted into her womb and carried the child to term.

So which one is the mother?

The woman who bore the child - and who had run away to Queensland from Florida with the child before returning home - says she is.

A local judge, writing that it broke his heart to say so, ruled that she's right.  Under Florida law, a woman who gives birth is the mother.  Last week, however, a state appeals court overturned his decision, saying the other mother has parental rights, too.

The appeals court ruled that the US and Florida constitutions trump Florida law and give par- enting rights to both women.  State law, the court said, has not kept up with the times.

Although a growing number of families have two parents who are the same sex, few involve children whose chromosomes come from one woman but who were carried to term by another.

A child raised in this environment shouldn't be forced to give up a parent

NANCY POLlKOFF U.S. LAW PROFESSOR

It is an important decision with a wider implication, said Nancy Polikoff, a law professor at American University Washington College of Law and an expert on gay-and-Iesbian family law.

"Any ruling that supports the right of a same-sex couple ... is important for its willingness to recognise that these families exist and a child raised in this environment shouldn't be forced to give up a parent," she said.

In this case, the same-sex couple - both policewomen had been in a committed relationship for 11 years, according to court records.  One is infertile, so she bore the egg grown by the other - from an anonymous sperm donor who had waived his parental rights.

The couple gave the baby a hyphenated version of their last names, but the birth certificate bore only the name of the woman who carried her to term.

The women split up when the little girl was two years old.  A year and a half later, the birth mother disappeared with the child, leaving the country without telling her former partner where they had gone.  Eventually, the egg donor tracked them down in Queensland.  They have since returned to Florida.

http://www.quadrant.org.au/magazine/issue/2011/11/cloning-the-blighted-science

November 2011

Volume LV Number 11

Quadrant magazine is the leading general intellectual journal of ideas, literature, poetry and historical and political debate published in Australia.

You can subscribe to the print edition of Quadrant or Quadrant Online, or both versions. See our subscription page for more information.

Bioethics

Cloning: The Blighted Science

David van Gend

The Australian Senate in 2006, by the narrowest possible margin, approved the manufacture of human embryos by cloning. This overturned the long-standing ban on creating embryos solely for research; a ban upheld unanimously by the Senate only four years earlier, but now abandoned in the face of overwhelming scientific hype.

Within twelve months of the Senate vote, a paradigm shift in stem cell science rendered cloning redundant. This much is certain: if Parliament had known in 2006 what we know now, no cloning legislation would ever have been drafted, let alone approved.

Cloning is a human desecration and a scientific failure. It has always been unethical, in that it creates human embryos with their destruction in mind; it is now also clearly unnecessary. The Senate vote was carried in 2006 by the argument that cloning was the only possible way to obtain “pluripotent stem cells” that perfectly match the patient. That argument lies in shreds, in part through the failure of cloning to produce results but above all through the discovery of an alternative stem cell technique which is both effective and ethically uncontentious.

Cloning, for all the millions spent worldwide and all the blighted human entities created and destroyed, has failed to obtain even a single pluripotent stem cell. By contrast, the new “induced pluripotent stem cell” (iPSC) technique has obtained the desired tailor-made cells in hundreds of patients with conditions such as diabetes, Parkinson’s and multiple sclerosis—without ever using women’s eggs or creating and destroying embryos.

And so, with the statutory review of our cloning laws tabled in federal parliament on July 7 this year, one might have expected a recommendation that the creation of human embryos solely for research be once again prohibited, given that the case for cloning is now so diminished.

To understand the actual recommendations of the Legislative Review of the Prohibition of Human Cloning for Reproduction and the Regulation of Human Embryo Research Act, and the depth of division within the Committee on the question of cloning, we need to appreciate both the transformed landscape of stem cell science and the cultural impasse of stem cell politics.

End of an era

The scientific landscape changed suddenly and irrevocably on November 21, 2007, in what was described as “an earthquake for both the science and politics of stem cell research”. On that day the Japanese scientist Shinya Yamanaka published his breakthrough of iPSC “direct reprogramming”, creating the equivalent of cloned embryonic stem cells directly from the skin cells of a middle-aged woman, bypassing any need for eggs or embryos.

“This is the Holy Grail—to be able to take a few cells from a patient and then turn them into stem cells in the laboratory,” acknowledged Dr Robert Lanza, a cloning researcher from Advanced Cell Technology in Boston.

The clearest sign that a revolution was upon us was the headline in the London Daily Telegraph: “Dolly Creator Prof Ian Wilmut Shuns Cloning”. The king of cloning, who had brought us the first cloned mammal and who held the licence to clone human embryos in the UK, declared that he was abandoning the field he had founded: “Instead Prof Wilmut is backing direct reprogramming, the embryo-free route pursued by Prof Yamanaka, which he finds ‘100 times more interesting’ … as well as ‘easier to accept socially’.”

The other great pioneer of embryo research likewise deferred to the Yamanaka method. Professor James Thomson, the scientist who first identified human embryonic stem cells (ESCs) in 1998, published a study on the same day as Yamanaka confirming that these new stem cells derived from human skin had every property of stem cells derived from embryos—but none of the ethical and political baggage. He told the New York Times it would not be long “before the stem cell wars are a distant memory”:

“A decade from now, this [controversy] will be just a funny historical footnote,” Dr Thomson said. More work remains, but he is confident that the path ahead is clear. “Isn’t it great to start a field and then to end it?”

This sense that one era had ended and another commenced in stem cell science was reinforced in a review of the Yamanaka revolution by Professor Martin Pera, who was formerly director of ESC research at the Australian National Stem Cell Centre. His article “Stem Cells: A New Year and a New Era” was published in Nature in January 2008:

Manipulating cells from adult human tissue, scientists have generated cells with the same developmental potential as embryonic stem cells. The research opportunities these exciting observations offer are limitless. The generation of induced pluripotent stem cells through direct reprogramming avoids the difficult ethical controversies surrounding the use of embryos for deriving stem cells.

The response was everywhere the same: this is marvellous science, and it gets rid of the social and ethical stress of obtaining eggs and exploiting embryos. The potential for this development to bypass the central ethical objection to cloning was recognised by Professor Loane Skene, former Chair of the Lockhart Review which advised the Australian government in 2005 to permit cloning. On the day Yamanaka’s iPSC research was published she told ABC radio:

What this does is take away the step of using the egg and creating the embryo which is particularly ethically contentious, and it offers the opportunity to get stem cells that are matched to a particular person.

In that succinct statement, one of our chief advocates for cloning reminded us of the goal that cloning failed to reach—getting stem cells that exactly match the patient—and acknowledged that this new method not only attains that goal, but is free from ethical concerns.

The new post-cloning era was summed up in January 2008 by a leading Australian researcher, Dr T.J. Martin, Emeritus Professor of Medicine at the University of Melbourne:

In the past few months the scientific situation has changed dramatically in ways that should make therapeutic cloning a historical peculiarity. iPSCs have been shown to have all the properties previously attributed to embryonic stem cells, and thus provide a means of preparing individually tailored pluripotent cells without the ethical problems involved in therapeutic cloning. To this must be added the fact that iPSCs can readily be prepared, whereas human therapeutic cloning has never been achieved. If it ever had been, it is such an inefficient process that it would always have required unacceptably large numbers of egg donations by women. There is no valid reason for any government to consider approval of therapeutic cloning that requires nuclear transfer into human eggs. Indeed, it would be prudent to have the 2006 federal legislation taken off the books.

In the light of that authoritative summary we should ask the obvious question: What possible justification is there now for human cloning, given the success of the iPSC alternative? Who would take seriously the proposal that I obtain hundreds of eggs from women (at significant risk to their health) and spend vast amounts of research money in order to clone you into your identical twin embryo, in order to obtain pluripotent stem cells that match you genetically (something nobody has yet managed to achieve) when I could simply take a skin cell from your arm and obtain the equivalent stem cells easily and ethically using Yamanaka’s direct reprogramming?

It seems that even embryo researchers no longer take the cloning proposal seriously since the triumph of direct reprogramming. Rudolph Jaenisch was the first scientist to demonstrate “therapeutic cloning” in a mouse in 2002 (note: “cloning” is used interchangeably with its technical term “somatic cell nuclear transfer” or SCNT) but in March 2011 he told the Scientist: “Ten years ago, we talked about the potential of nuclear transfer for therapy. But it turns out the technique was of no practical relevance.”

In Australia, only one laboratory—Sydney IVF—has even attempted SCNT/cloning since 2006. So much for the emotional arm-twisting by political scientists, warning that failure to pass urgent cloning laws would drain our keenest brains overseas and delay cures for Australian kids. The Australian immunologist Professor Ian Frazer surely cringes now at his letter to senators on the eve of the vote, urging them to support the cloning bill “in its entirety” or be an impediment to sick children:

Will our children look back in 25 years and say “Our parliamentarians made the right decision, that gave us access to cures for diabetes, heart disease, and neurological disorders,” or will they be forced to travel to the US, Europe and Asia to seek treatments?

Instead we look back after five years and see that cloning is withering on the vine; even a world leader in embryo manipulation like Sydney IVF, having used 352 precious eggs, was not able to keep any of the twenty-seven resultant cloned embryos alive long enough to yield a single stem cell. And why, post-Yamanaka, would anyone put any more eggs in the cloning basket-case? The Director of Sydney IVF, Robert Jansen, conceded that point in a recent interview with the Sydney Morning Herald: “Because there are newer ways of producing cloned [sic] stem cells without using eggs, Jansen concedes that therapeutic cloning may not turn out to have a big role in medicine after all.”

It is the same story the world over: cloning is a blighted science, ethically and technically. The onus is on those who still defend cloning to explain why such a convoluted and contentious path should ever again be taken when there is an effective and ethical alternative.

That question is so obvious that even the popular media started asking it—indeed, it featured on Oprah! In a highly symbolic moment (in the presence of Michael J. Fox, Parkinson’s sufferer and prominent advocate for embryo research) Oprah’s resident expert, Dr Oz, asked why you would mess with embryos when you can simply reprogram one of your skin cells:

I think, Oprah, the stem cell debate is dead, and I’ll tell you why … The problem with embryonic stem cells is that they come from embryos, like all of us were made from embryos … In the last year we’ve made 10 years’ advancement … and here’s what the deal is: I can take a little bit of your skin (here he reaches over and touches Fox on the arm), take those cells, and get them to go back in time so they’re like they were when you were first made.

Time magazine asks whether there is now anything left to argue over:

No embryos, no eggs, no hand-wringing over where the cells came from and whether it was ethical to make them in the first place. Yamanaka’s and Thomson’s work sidestepped that altogether, raising the tantalizing question: Is the long-raging stem-cell debate at last over? Yamanaka thinks it might be. Other giants of the field seem to agree.

Yet not all will agree. People who have a lot to lose through the death of cloning—celebrity advocates like Fox, progressive politicians who see cloning as a victory over conservatives in the culture wars, scientists who have no respect for the moral status of the embryo and who reject the idea of their research or their funding being restricted by parliament—will not lightly accept an end to the stem-cell debate.

Humans second-class

Those who wish to keep cloning on its futile life-support for a while longer will repeat fallacies, both ethical and scientific, that are wearily familiar but still effective.

In the quest by cloning advocates in 2006 to dehumanise the cloned embryo, the most deceitful argument was that it is not really a human embryo, and therefore not deserving of special respect. The clone, they said, is just “cells in a Petri dish”, or “an intermediate cellular product”. If no genuine embryo is created, there is no big deal ethically—so let’s just get on with the research. Regrettably, as the Hansard record shows, this argument misled many senators and MPs.

Clearly these politicians had not heard Professor Loane Skene confirming, in her testimony to the 2006 Senate inquiry, that cloning does indeed create a human embryo—an entity which has the capacity, like any other embryo created naturally or by IVF, to grow as a baby. She said:

We did not shy away from calling it an embryo because it is conceivable, as happened with Dolly the sheep, that if that entity were put into a woman, after a lot of care, it could in fact develop into a foetus. So we did call it an embryo.

An entity which “could in fact develop into a foetus” is nothing less, nothing other than a living human embryo. That is why the 2006 legislation, allowing the creation of this embryo solely for research and destruction, was such a momentous question of conscience. It established an inferior caste of human offspring, created not for the project of life but for experimentation and death.

Objectively, the cloned embryo is indistinguishable from an embryo created by natural fertilisation. Cloning, or SCNT, is just another way of making an embryo. It involves taking a woman’s egg from which the nucleus has been removed; transferring a new nucleus (a new genetic identity) from a donor’s cell; exposing the egg with its new nucleus to a range of stimuli in the hope that, after using a few dozen eggs, one of them might respond as if fertilised by a sperm and begin to develop and grow.

The scientist would have created an identical twin of the donor, and at a week of age it would be suitable for the extraction of stem cells from its inner cell mass—so destroying the embryo.

This is the dual desecration of cloning: not just that a human life is wrongfully destroyed for the benefit of others, but that a human life is wrongfully created out of any normal human setting. To clone is to generate the first absolute orphan, a living human embryo with no mother; only an emptied-out female egg is used, with no trace of the mother’s genetic identity. And no father, for a male donor of DNA is not a father to the clone but his identical twin. These are not beloved offspring but abused artefacts, brought into being outside the circle of human kinship and care.

Politically, for legislators to be comfortable about manufacturing a laboratory subclass of human embryos, cloning advocates needed to assure them that the cloned entity was indeed inferior to other embryos. This dehumanising strategy was an international one, and bioethicist Leon Kass, Chair of the US President’s Council on Bioethics in 2006, pleaded for honesty about the cloned embryo:

If we are properly to evaluate the ethics of this research and where it might lead, we must call things by their right names and not disguise what is going on with euphemism or misleading nomenclature. The initial product of the cloning technique is without doubt a living cloned human embryo, the functional equivalent of a fertilised egg.

Misleading nomenclature had been adopted at the highest level—the International Society for Stem Cell Research (ISSCR). A scathing editorial in Nature entitled “Playing the Name Game” reported on the June 2005 meeting of the ISSCR and accused it of attempting “to change the definition of the word ‘embryo’” and “playing semantic games in an effort to evade scrutiny”:

Whether taken from a fertility clinic or made through cloning, a blastocyst embryo has the potential to become a fully functional organism. And appearing to deny that fact will not fool die-hard opponents of this research. If anything, it will simply open up scientists to the accusation that they are trying to distance themselves from difficult moral issues by changing the terms of the debate.

A favourite name game in 2006 was to define an embryo narrowly as the entity created by union of sperm and egg. Cloning does not use a sperm to create an embryo; ipso facto the cloned entity is not an embryo! Never mind that Dolly the cloned sheep had no sperm involved in her creation, and without doubt started life as a perfectly adequate sheep embryo. Likewise Snuppy the puppy, sundry cows, horses and a dozen other mammalian species arising from cloned embryos, where of course no sperm was involved.

To its credit, the 2011 Legislative Review did not pretend that an embryo created by SCNT/cloning was anything different from a normal embryo, acknowledging that: “an SCNT created embryo, to be useful, must be an embryo with the full potential of any embryo”.

Yet even with that simple biological truth established, our lawmakers, and wider society, divide on the metaphysical question: “So what?” In the words of our Senate report from the 2002 debate on using “surplus” IVF embryos for stem cell research:

There is in fact little disagreement that the embryo is a human life and that its life commences at fertilization. The difficulties arise in specifying exactly in what sense it is to be considered “a life”, and hence what significance should be attached to it.

We can agree on the bare facts—that the embryo from day one is a living individual member of our species—but whether that individual life “matters” depends on the worldview one brings to the debate. Faced with this key question—the meaning of a human life in all its embryonic simplicity—the cultural divide shows up most starkly.

On this question of significance, the clichéd response of cloning advocates is to sneer that the embryo is “smaller than the full stop at the end of this sentence”. This idea that something small must therefore be insignificant fails to impress when we consider that the universe itself was once “smaller than the full stop at the end of this sentence”. To cosmologists, the fact that such a tiny entity contained within itself the capacity to unfold into this vast and fruitful cosmos is not a cause for sneering, but for intellectual wonder. We need similar eyes of understanding when we contemplate the embryonic human, fresh from the Big Bang of conception, unfolding into the astonishing world of a rational being.

There is also the more serious argument that an embryo cannot be considered a distinct human being until the stage of possible twinning has passed, around fourteen days of age. Until that time, we cannot know if the embryo is going to end up as one entity or two, which surely casts doubt on its moral status as an individual being.

Interestingly, it is the very phenomenon of cloning which dispels the fog of this argument. For with cloning, you or I can undergo “twinning” well past day fourteen—in fact, tomorrow if you like. Does that mean that your moral status as a true, unambiguous individual today is in question, just because tomorrow you might split off an identical twin? Prior to fourteen days, at the very least we are looking at one embryonic human; there is the happy chance of a second, younger entity arising by the phenomenon of natural cloning, or twinning, but that is no cause for downgrading the significance of either life.

Finally there is the argument that so many embryos are “wasted” naturally that they surely cannot be considered to have a full human status—even, for some theologians, full spiritual status in the eyes of God. Estimates vary wildly for embryonic loss, but even if the figure is 30 per cent I do not see how the problem is any different from the similar “wastage” of infants in the part of central Africa where I was born. Because some 30 per cent died in infancy (including children of my pioneer ancestors) does that mean they were not truly human? With all due respect, if God has a problem taking seriously the moral status of embryos because so many are “wasted”, He has the same problem with these wasted African infants, or with the high percentage of Asian babies wasted through female infanticide. And I remain unconvinced as to why a higher spiritual status should be granted to those of us who, through good luck and good environment, happen to have persisted longer on this earth. It seems prudent for theologians to give the benefit of the doubt to the most embryonic of these His brethren.

Such arguments about the humanity of the embryo do matter, because all future policy on cloning, human–animal hybridisation, prenatal eugenics, transgenic manipulation and other as yet unimagined abuses depends on the dominant cultural view of what the embryo is, and therefore how we are bound to treat it.

Fraud and fairy tales

Future policy in this field also depends on whether lawmakers demand truthfulness from scientists, or succumb to spin. Public advocacy for embryo experimentation and cloning is a case study in the willingness of some scientists to use and misuse their authority to achieve “progressive” legislative outcomes. It has been little better than an extended and embarrassing fairy tale told to gullible children. “To start with, people need a fairy tale,” said Ronald McKay, a stem cell researcher at the US National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. “Maybe that’s unfair, but they need a story line that’s relatively simple to understand.”

McKay’s comment to the Washington Post was in the context of Ronald Reagan’s death from Alzheimer’s in 2004, with its attendant public outcry for increased embryo research. One Australian embryo researcher, Professor Peter Rathjen, famously dismissed any talk of stem cell therapies for Alzheimer’s as “bloody nonsense”. The Washington Post correctly noted that Alzheimer’s was not the sort of disease open to stem cell therapy, and that science was being distorted amidst the hype. Yet the fairy tale lives on; an Australian patient lobby group has recently included Alzheimer’s in its list of reasons to support our cloning laws.

Sometimes scientists admit to the hyping of hope. After permissive laws on embryo research had been approved in Britain, the President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Lord Robert Winston, acknowledged that “the desire to source some stem cells from embryos—an ethically controversial area—probably led a number of the field’s proponents to hype outcomes just to get liberal legislative approval”. This year, the doyen of liberal bioethicists in the USA, Arthur Caplan, confessed: “Embryonic stem-cell research was completely overhyped, in terms of its promise. And people knew it at the time. I tried to say so myself at different times, even though I support embryonic stem-cell research.”

Sometimes scientists just lie. In 2005 South Korea’s “supreme scientist” Hwang Woo-suk duped the world into believing that he had successfully cloned human embryos. The top scientific journals vied to publish his deceit, and Australia’s Lockhart Committee based its advocacy for cloning almost entirely on the breakthrough in South Korea. One would have thought, when he was found to be a fraud in the same month as the Lockhart Review was published, that the Committee would have revised its recommendations, but no. And one would have thought Hwang’s career was finished, but in recent years he found work in Colonel Gaddafi’s Libya; Hwang was the creator of Snuppy, the first cloned puppy, and thoughts turn to “the mad dog of the Arab world” as a fit project for such a scientist.

As far back as 2002, our Deputy Prime Minister, John Anderson, lamented: “If we can’t believe leading scientists to give us the real truth, the real parameters for this debate, how are we as a society to form the right judgments?” His dismay was provoked by Australia’s leading advocate of embryo research, Professor Alan Trounson, who had been playing Pied Piper to enchanted MPs, showing them (and television viewers) a video of a paralysed white rat. This rat, he explained, was treated with embryonic stem cells and—voila!—could now move its hind limbs. The vote was imminent on whether to allow “surplus” IVF embryos to be used for stem cell research, and this spectacular video was the trump card of the “yes” campaign.

Unfortunately for Trounson we had a US colleague, Dr David Prentice, with us in Parliament, and David said—“I know that rat!” He was not referring to the professor but to the rodent from Johns Hopkins University—which had not been treated with stem cells from a five-day-old IVF embryo (which was what our politicians had been led to believe) but with germ cells (sperm and egg precursors) from the primitive gonads of a nine-week-old aborted human foetus. In the spirit of “people need a fairy tale”, Trounson had not thought it relevant to tell the politicians where the cells actually came from; it might have spoiled the enchantment. Likewise, since fairy tales are not subject to scientific standards of scholarship, he felt free to lullaby the Senate that this dubious rat experiment had been published in Nature when in fact it had been rejected by that journal.

The spell finally broke when the Australian passed on a rebuke from the rat’s owner, who was displeased at his pet being paraded under false pretences:

Douglas Kerr, of the Johns Hopkins Institute in Baltimore, said all his research used germ cells from older fetuses and not the cells involved in the Australian legislation. Although a supporter of embryonic stem-cell research, Dr Kerr also said it was “not accurate” to cite his research because it was not approved for publication.

Shortly afterwards I attended a bioethics conference at Johns Hopkins, hoping to pay my respects to Kerr’s rat and shake its poor paralysed paw. I e-mailed David Prentice, who was to speak at the conference: “We should put the idea of a monument to That Rat to the Johns Hopkins Board. I envisage a sculpture that will actually move its hindquarters when you put counterfeit coins in the slot.”

Nearly a decade later, what has become of these embryonic fairy tales? Are we perhaps, at last, to find the stem cell pot at the end of the rainbow with the recent announcements of “embryonic stem cell treatments” in the USA? Is this the “biological gold” that one Australian science reporter drooled over, or just more fool’s gold?

Reality check on embryos

The first question to ask whenever there is talk of embryonic stem cell treatments is this: Why not just use iPSCs, since they are functionally identical, and have the great advantage of being a genetic match to the patient? The second question to ask is: Why take the risk of tumour formation (a danger inherent in both ESCs and iPSCs) if you can just use your own adult stem cells and get both advantages—the lack of tumour risk and a perfect genetic match?

Tumour formation is the greatest impediment to pluripotent cell therapies; even more serious than the problem of immune rejection. No ESC (whether from IVF or from cloning) and no iPSC (since they are the same as ESCs) can ever be put into a human being, because they form teratoma tumours in animals. As the ISSCR itself states: “Embryonic stem cells themselves cannot directly be used for therapies as they would likely cause tumors.” The same does not apply to adult stem cells (ASCs). Tumour risk is the great distinguishing feature between ESCs and our safe, predictable ASCs which have been used directly in many thousands of patients without causing teratoma tumours.

The only way, then, that ESCs or iPSCs can be used in human treatment is first to mature them into more stable cells that are less likely to turn into tumours and injure the patient. The only half-safe ESC is one that is no longer an ESC. This is the method proposed in the two ESC-based trials in the USA.

Geron Corp’s trial in spinal injury uses ESCs from IVF embryos as a source to cultivate more mature nerve stem cells for transplant. This is not (contrary to media hype) a “treatment” but a phase-one safety trial to see if tumours occur; there is still a concern that the “matured” cells in this trial may revert to ESC status and cause a teratoma. Further, because the IVF embryos are genetically foreign, the patients require immune-suppressing drugs to prevent rejection. The same problems apply to the other proposed trial by US firm Advanced Cell Technology, using ESCs to generate retinal cells for use in treating macular degeneration.

Both trials invite the usual two questions. First, why mess with embryos when you can use iPSCs? In macular degeneration, the University of Wisconsin has already used iPSCs to grow human retinal cells and a team at University College London has successfully repaired retinal damage in rats using iPSCs. Second, why use these dangerous pluripotent stem cells at all when you can use safe ASCs? The University of Nebraska has already generated retinal cells using our own ASCs and several teams of scientists have already published trials using a patient’s own ASCs in spinal injury, with no need for immune drugs and no tumours formed.

Cloning obviously plays no part in any of these ESC-based trials, and smart private money will realise that ESC-based treatments make little sense when we can so readily use iPSCs. ASCs and iPSCs are the future of stem cell science, with cloning and embryo experimentation dying a lingering and unlamented death.

Death throes

Predictably, then, it is ASC and iPSC science that needs to be denigrated by scientists who refuse to go gentle into cloning’s good night, who still demand a licence to research whatever they find interesting—no matter how marginal or contentious.

In the iPSC field, which is the most direct threat to cloning, the two lines of attack by such scientists are that the reprogramming process introduces cancer-causing genes; and that iPSCs are not sufficiently similar to ESCs to be considered an adequate alternative.

The cancer risk was a passing concern with Yamanaka’s original method, which used viral vectors to insert potentially cancer-causing genes. But within months, several scientists had created iPSCs without any viral integration. It is no longer an issue.

As to the claim that iPSCs are not sufficiently similar to the ESCs one might get from cloning, and therefore we should keep trying to clone: pioneering iPSC scientist James Thomson stated that ESCs and iPSCs are indeed equivalent. Another study in 2008 found that in all the aspects studied, “human iPSCs are indistinguishable from human embryonic stem cells”. Obviously, as recent studies show, there are going to be subtle epigenetic or genetic differences detectable between pluripotent cells generated in different ways, but the real question is of functional “real-world” difference between iPSCs and ESCs—and these are not found to be significant. Anything an ESC can do an iPSC can do—but only the iPSC matches the patient.

The Legislative Review acknowledged as much:

there are subtle epigenetic modifications ... But functionally (from limited tests to date), optimal iPS cells carry the same potential as ES cells for tissue-specific differentiation in vitro, the ultimate goal of therapeutic cloning.

End of argument? Cloning is now clearly superseded by iPSC? As if startled by the implications of this acknowledgment, the majority on the Review Committee quickly reasserted the morally-neutered position: that we should just research everything, both iPSC and SCNT/cloning, and see what might turn up.

The moral philosopher on the Committee, Rev. Kevin McGovern, Director of the Caroline Chisholm Centre for Health Ethics, pointed to the majority position’s lack of proportion between the shrivelled residual claims for cloning and the once-unthinkable act of creating human embryos solely for destruction:

It is not clear why SCNT-derived lines would be more useful than iPSC lines. Beyond that, there is only the possibility of what “might” be learnt if research into SCNT continues. The proposed benefits of SCNT research therefore seem not entirely convincing, sometimes rather small, and largely theoretical. On the other hand, SCNT involves the most profound of ethical concerns. It is the creation of human life which will be used in research and then destroyed.

McGovern’s argument, not surprisingly, did not prevail.

The 2011 review: clinging to cloning

The two dominant figures on the five-person Legislative Review Committee into our laws on embryo experimentation were arguably the nation’s most influential advocates for cloning. The fact that there was no prominent critic appointed to provide a public perception of impartiality is the fault of the responsible minister, the Hon. Mark Butler.

Law professor Loane Skene was put in the peculiar position of, in effect, reviewing her own handiwork—since the cloning legislation of 2006 was almost verbatim the recommendations of the Lockhart Review of which she was acting Chair. Her ongoing advocacy for embryo experimentation was evident as recently as October 2010 in a “for and against” publication I shared with her.

Professor Ian Frazer was “Australian of the Year” at the time of the cloning legislation in 2006, and his influential lobbying of senators, described earlier, may have determined the knife-edge outcome. His media statements leading up to the cloning vote that year included describing ESCs as “basically a repair kit for the human body”, and claiming that this research has “the capacity to solve very many of the major diseases of mankind: brain disease, heart disease, diabetes for example”. There was no other scientist on the Committee to provide critical balance. The other members were the ethicist McGovern, academic and midwife Dr Faye Thompson, and the Chairman, retired Federal Court judge the Hon. Peter Heerey.

Despite the predictable outcome of this review, the majority statement defending the status quo sounds almost apologetic, so deflated is the SCNT/cloning position compared to the puff and hype of 2006:

Recommendation 3: (by majority) The provisions in the current legislation regarding SCNT should not be amended.

However, in reaching this recommendation, the Review Committee notes the lack of progress in SCNT research in animals and humans. The Review Committee believes that this must impact on the Licensing Committee’s interpretation of its statutory obligation, when it is considering any future application for a licence to undertake research involving SCNT, to take into account “the likelihood of significant advance in knowledge or improvement in technologies … which could not reasonably be achieved by other means”.

With the advent of Yamanaka’s iPSC method, stem cell science now has its “other means”. This majority recommendation may serve to keep the stain of cloning on our statutes a while longer, but the science itself is in terminal decline. The powerful dissenting statement by Rev. McGovern—whose concerns were shared, we are told, by Dr Faye Thompson—provides a fitting obituary for human cloning in Australia:

In 2006, SCNT seemed the only way to seek the benefits of regenerative medicine. With the advent of induced pluripotent stem cells, this is no longer the case. It is hard to see what SCNT now contributes to the progress of regenerative medicine. What would be lost if Australia’s regulatory regime permitted the harvesting of embryonic stem cells from excess embryos along with research with adult stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells, but did not permit SCNT?

What would be lost is scientific and political “face” by those who invested so much reputation in the campaign for cloning back in 2006.

What would be gained is a reassertion that science should only be done if it does not diminish our humanity; a redirection of scarce resources to genuinely promising research; and recognition that we can get the good things of stem cell science without the wanton corruption of cloning.

Dr David van Gend is a general practitioner and university lecturer in Toowoomba, and National Director of Australians for Ethical Stem Cell Research, www.cloning.org.au.

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Copyright ©2008 Quadrant Magazine Ltd. All rights reserved.

The Christian Post > World|Mon, Aug. 15 2011 11:10 AM EDT

By Christian Today

LONDON – Prime Minister David Cameron has vowed to address the “moral collapse” that led to widespread looting and violence across English cities last week.

Police officers walk with a youth arrested following raid an address connected with the recent riots, in Brixton, south London August 14, 2011. Prime Minister David Cameron on Monday promised a law and order "fightback" and robust action to mend what he called Britain's broken society after riots and looting last week shocked Britons and tarnished its reputation abroad. Picture taken August 14, 2011.

In a speech to his Oxford constituency today, the prime minister outlined plans for a shake-up of social policy as he seeks to assure that he can “take on and defeat” the nation’s social problems.

He has pledged to “review every aspect of our work to mend our broken society, on schools, welfare, families, parenting, addiction, communities, on the cultural, legal, bureaucratic problems in our society; from the twisting and misrepresenting of human rights that has undermined personal responsibility, to the obsession with health and safety that has eroded people’s willingness to act according to common sense.”

The government has already promised to crack down on the criminal gangs blamed for last week’s looting spree.

Rejecting the Labour’s call for an inquiry into the violence, Cameron said: “We know what’s gone wrong.”

"These riots were not about race," he said. "These riots were not about government cuts ... And these riots were not about poverty."

"No, this was about behavior ... people showing indifference to right and wrong; people with a twisted moral code; people with a complete absence of self-restraint."

The prime minister acknowledged that some may dismiss his comments as a lecture from a politician. But he noted that “politicians shying away from speaking the truth about behavior, about morality” has “actually helped to cause the social problems we see around us.”

“We have been too unwilling for too long to talk about what is right and what is wrong. We have too often avoided saying what needs to be said – about everything from marriage to welfare to common courtesy,” he said.

He listed irresponsibility, selfishness, fatherless children, reward without effort, crime without punishment and behaving as if one’s choices have consequences as some of the problems contributing to a “slow-motion moral collapse.”

“What last week has shown is that this moral neutrality, this relativism – it’s not going to cut it anymore,” he stressed.

“[B]ad behavior has literally arrived on people’s doorsteps. And we can’t shy away from the truth anymore.”

He called the riots a wake-up call for the country and called for “the restoration of responsibility.”

“Now, just as people wanted criminals robustly confronted on our street, so they want to see these problems taken on and defeated,” Cameron said. “Our security fightback must be matched by a social fightback.”

And the “social fightback” starts with families. “[I]f we want to have any hope of mending our broken society, family and parenting is where we’ve got to start.”

“We are all in this together, and we will mend our broken society – together.”

More than 2,800 people have been arrested and 1,300 charged following the disorder.

Courts sat through the night last week and there were unprecedented hearings on Sunday to deal with the volume of cases.

In Birmingham, around 2,000 people took part in a peace rally yesterday in memory of three men run down and killed by a car as they protected their property. Three men have been charged over the murders.

On Sunday, churches across Britain joined in praying for the restoration of the nation. Individual Christians and organizations like Youth for Christ have been part of the response in affected communities, helping to clear up the mess and providing practical assistance to victims.

In London, hundreds gathered at Methodist Central Hall in Westminster for a prayer vigil on Saturday organized by Premier Christian Radio.

“We need to see Christians uniting to pray for peace and an end to the turmoil,” said Premier's chief executive, Peter Kerridge. “And, with young people bearing the brunt of the media wrath, we also want to send a message of hope to our youth.”

Obama Elevates LGBT as U.S. Foreign Policy Priority

http://www.c-fam.org/fridayfax/volume-14/obama-elevates-lgbt-as-u.s.-foreign-policy-priority.html

http://godfatherpolitics.com/2554/sharia-law-deciding-american-court-cases/#ixzz1g9GQiXF7

Sharia Law Deciding American Court Cases

“Shariah Law and American Courts: An Assessment of State Appellate Court Cases,” published by the Center for Security Policy, is one of the most comprehensive studies I have ever seen. It covers more than 600 pages of material. The following summary statement is shocking:

Our findings suggest that Shariah law has entered into state court decisions, in conflict with the Constitution and state public policy. Some commentators have said there are no more than one or two cases of Shariah law in U.S. state court cases; yet we found 50 significant cases just from the small sample of appellate published cases. Others state with certainty that state court judges will always reject any foreign law, including Shariah law, when it conflicts with the Constitution or state public policy; yet we found 15 Trial Court cases, and 12 Appellate Court cases, where Shariah was found to be applicable in the case at bar. The facts are the facts: some judges are making decisions deferring to Shariah law even when those decisions conflict with Constitutional protections. This is a serious issue and should be a subject of public debate and engagement by policymakers.

Once these types of decisions made in American courts become part of published law they can be used as precedent law for future cases. Anyone entering an American court will be bound by decisions made by courts that appeal to these cases.

Law must be based on some transcendental standard. In the past, American law was a blending of biblical and natural law. The Supreme Court cases regarding polygamy demonstrate this fact. But with our new pluralistic attitudes, everything is up for grabs. And because we are trying to accommodate Islam so radicals won’t blow us up, Sharia law is becoming accepted as one legitimate law among many.

This does not mean that Sharia law is the only law the courts are using. International law is the new legal kid on the block. Of course, this would include Sharia. Consider Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s judicial philosophy:

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is acknowledging the growing effect of international law on Supreme Court decisions, particularly in the areas of the death penalty, race admissions and gay sex: “Our island or lone ranger mentality is beginning to change,” Ginsburg said during a speech to the American Constitution Society, a liberal lawyers group holding its first convention. Justices “are becoming more open to comparative and international law perspectives,” said Ginsburg, who has supported a more global view of judicial decision making. Ginsburg cited an international treaty in her vote . . . to uphold the use of race in college admissions.

What makes today’s use of international law attractive to so many judges? Referencing international law gives the appearance of judicial legitimacy. It’s a poor judge’s version of “higher law” which in reality is nothing more than “horizontal law.” One nation appealing to the judicial decisions of another nation is little different from Hugh Hefner asking Larry Flynt what he thinks about pornography.

An Emory University Law School publication noted that the Malak v. Malak case, which involved a Lebanese court decision, was cited as precedent in other Muslim child custody cases.

Atlas Shrugs publisher and Islam analyst Pamela Geller says that Islamic law cited as the basis for any American court decision shows that the American legal system is turning a dangerous corner.

“It is setting a very dangerous precedent. Shariah law and U.S. law conflict in numerous ways, including on issues of freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and equality of rights for women. Allowing Shariah to be a determining factor in U.S. courtrooms threatens those rights for all of us,” Geller said.

Read more: Sharia Law Deciding American Court Cases http://godfatherpolitics.com/2554/sharia-law-deciding-american-court-cases/#ixzz1kegAROHc

http://www.couriermail.com.au/ipad/denial-of-babys-life-will-destroy/story-fn6ck620-1226220254910

• by: David Van Gend
• From:The Courier-Mail
• December 13, 201112:00AM

"THE law in this state," in the words of Judge Fred McGuire "has not abdicated its responsibility as guardian of the silent innocence of the unborn."

I have held a baby born at 23 weeks at the Royal Brisbane and Women's Hospital, and there is nothing more innocent. If somebody attempted to assault her, I would have defended her. Yet there are calls for changes to our abortion law to allow babies even older than these "premmies" to be lethally assaulted, no questions asked.

Victoria has had such a law since 2008, a barbaric law which judges a 23-week baby to be a child when sleeping in the hospital nursery but mere human waste when in the womb, free to be killed for any or no reason.

Leading human rights lawyer Frank Brennan called this Victorian legislation "totalitarian", not only for allowing cruel late-term abortions "on demand" but for its threat of prosecution for any doctor who conscientiously objects.

Yet there is pressure mounting for similar brutal legislation to be introduced to Queensland.

In The Courier-Mail (Viewpoint, December 6) University of Queensland professors Nick Fisk and Heather Douglas called for law reform and falsely claimed the historical purpose of our abortion laws was solely to prevent harm to women.

In truth, the moral status of the baby was central to the development of common law, with a key judgment in a 1938 case stating: "The law of the land has always held that human life is sacred and the protection the law gives to human life extends also to the unborn child in the womb. The unborn child in the womb must not be destroyed unless the destruction of the child is for preserving the still more precious life of the mother."

Queensland law has always permitted abortion to preserve the mother's life. As Judge McGuire concluded in his 1986 ruling, such law is "a humane doctrine devised for humanitarian purposes but it cannot be made the excuse for every inconvenient conception".

Yet there are many voices demanding unrestricted abortion even for "inconvenient conception". For these people it is as if there is no tiny beating heart (already there at five weeks of pregnancy) which is stopped by the violence of abortion. The only crime, they say, is that of interfering with a woman's absolute right to decide if she is ready to be a mother.

But a woman is already a mother, for better for worse, when she is first "with child" and there is no right to take a life which is not ours to take. Consenting adults who conceive have a duty of care to their baby which nothing can set aside. The law must uphold that duty and uphold the fundamental prohibition against intentional killing.

Perhaps passing laws that deny the baby's existence is the only coping mechanism for a society that already takes the life of every fourth baby before birth. But it is a denial and delusion that is destroying us, turning us hard and cold where we should be most tender.

The existing law defends "the silent innocence of the unborn", and encourages us adults to find solutions to our sexual and social predicaments that do not involve killing our offspring.

* Dr David van Gend is a Toowoomba GP and a senior lecturer in medicine at the University of Queensland.

DATE:                            2 December 2011

TO:                                The Premier, the Leader of the Parliamentary Liberal/National Party, the Independent Members of the Legislative Assembly, and the Media

FROM:                           Rev Ron Clark, Clerk of Assembly

SUBJECT:                       Decision of recent Unforeseen Assembly

At an Unforeseen Meeting of the State Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Queensland on 2 November, it was resolved to advise that the Presbyterian Church of Queensland is concerned that the Queensland Anti-Discrimination Commission can be used to stifle free speech by the initiation of a complaint which is frivolous and/or vexatious, and call on the Attorney General to review the appropriate legislation and/or regulations to address this matter.

RC

TO:                                           The Premier, the Leader of the Parliamentary Liberal/National Party, the Independent Members of the Legislative Assembly, and the Media

FROM:                                     Rev Ron Clark, Clerk of Assembly

SUBJECT:                                Decision of recent Unforeseen Assembly

At an Unforeseen Meeting of the State Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of Queensland on 2 November, it was resolved that the Presbyterian Church of Queensland is opposed to the establishment of a Same-Sex Register or the legalising of Same-Sex Unions in Queensland or the amending of the Commonwealth Marriage Act to include Same-Sex “Marriage”, because homosexual practice, as well as adultery, sexual relations before marriage, incest, prostitution, murder, theft, and covetousness are against the commandments of God and lead to His eternal judgement.

RC