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International
Right to Life Federation, Inc.
Vol.
13 No. 3
(May/June, 2002)
Belgium Legalizes Euthanasia
After more than a year's debate, the Belgian lower House
voted to legalize euthanasia 86 to 51. It had passed their
Senate last October. When it comes into effect this summer,
Belgium will become the second country in the world to legalize
active euthanasia. The first was the Netherlands where it
has been legal for over two decades. These are the first
countries to legalize euthanasia since the Nazis in the
1940's. The new Belgium legislation legalizes direct killing
for those with terminal illnesses. It is also legal to kill
people with "incurable" psychological illnesses,
as well as those with other "incurable" conditions,
who, if left alone, might live for many years. The main
opposition to the bill came from Christian Democrats who,
until a year ago, had been the majority party and had been
able to prevent this passage. The Christian Democrat Party
has announced that it will challenge the law in the European
Court of Human Rights. Our observers on the scene tell us
that the law is even more radical than the Dutch law.
European Court-No to Euthanasia
In what was a clear and definitive blow to assisted suicide
and euthanasia, the European Court, Europe's leading human
rights court, unanimously voted to deny an appeal by a paralyzed
British woman who wants her husband to have permission to
kill her. Diane Pretty, 43, has a motor neuron disease which
has paralyzed her from the neck down. Britain's highest
court had refused her request. She appealed to the European
Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. It unanimously
agreed with the British decision. This is considered a test
case for the rest of Europe. It will clearly put a brake
on assisted suicide legislation in other European countries
and could even open the way for legal challenge, before
the same court, to overturn the Dutch euthanasia laws.
Hawaii-No to Euthanasia
It was a very close call but pro-lifers won this one. The
governor had said he would sign. The House had passed, and
it was expected that the Senate would probably also pass
a bill to legalize assisted suicide, a bill considerably
more radical than the Oregon bill.
Due to a literal flood of letters, phone calls, etc. from
constituents, three senators changed their minds and on
the final vote defeated the bill. The final vote was 14
to 11 against legalizing physician- assisted suicide and
euthanasia.
Russian Duma Prohibits Human Cloning
By a vote of 260 to 4, the Russian Duma passed a bill to
temporarily ban all human cloning. The bill envisions extension
of the bill after its five-year limit or possibly cancellation,
depending upon the "accumulated scientific knowledge"
at that time.
U.S. Birthrate Now Adequate
For the first time since 1971, U.S. women are producing
enough children to offset deaths, based on statistics from
the National Center for Health Statistics. The Center reported
4,058,814 births in 2000; this is up 2.5% from 1999. This
is the first time since 1993 that births have topped 4 million.
According to the report, researchers gave much of the credit
for the increase to the "roaring economy of the 90's."
The actual figure is 2.13 children per woman in her lifetime.
This measures women ages 15 to 49. The internationally accepted
figure for replacement birthrate is 2.1 per woman in her
lifetime. All age groups showed an increase except teens,
which dropped a fraction.
*Your editor must add that the heavy immigration in recent
years has brought many young people into America who are
having more children than this country's original euro-Caucasian
people.
United Nations
The World Summit for Children was held at the United Nations
May 8 - 10, 2002. The first preparatory meeting in the run
up to this summit was in February 2001. This was just after
the inauguration of President George W. Bush. We did not
know the U.S. delegates as well at this meeting. Now, however,
we know them very well. The negotiations were bogged down
for weeks. At the subsequent meeting in June 2001, a Canadian
delegate admitted publicly that the term "reproductive
health services" did include abortion. This led to
pandemonium in the negotiating room. Negotiations continued
up to 10 September 2001. They were brought to a sudden halt
by the terrorist attacks on the U.S. the next day.
In April, negotiations resumed. Again there was a deadlock
over abortion-related terms in the Child Summit document.
The EU, Canada, Rio Group (Latin and Central America) and
a small group of pro-abortion countries led by Liechtenstein
fought against the U.S., some Muslim countries, the Holy
See and some developing countries. However, the U.S. delegates
were determined to represent their President and were successful.
The final document does not promote abortion, and many
countries put in excellent reservations at the end, affirming
the right to life from conception and stating that the family
has the primary responsibility for its children.
It is a matter of concern that so much time and money is
spent on such conferences. They are just an ideological
battleground between conservative governments and liberal
ones. Many millions of children could have been fed and
immunized for the cost of such a conference. Instead we
have a document that will, in all probability, not benefit
a single child.
I am so grateful that pro-life President George W. Bush
is in charge of the U.S. He is the best hope for obtaining
a culture of life in the world. Our trust, however, should
not be in princes but in the Lord God of the universe who
holds the nations in the palm of His hand. (Information
provided by Peter Smith, for The Society for the Protection
of Unborn Children & The International Right to Life
Federation)
Bush Proposes Cloning Ban at U.N.
What a difference a new administration makes. You can be
sure that nothing approaching this would have happened under
the Clinton administration. Here we have the United States
proposing "a global and comprehensive ban on human
cloning and all experimentation involving human embryos."
The U.S. delegate, Carolyn Willson, stated, "Human
cloning is an enormously troubling development in biotechnology."
"Such cloning," she said "could lead to a
future in which human beings are born for spare body parts
and children are engineered to fit eugenic specifications.
Cloning is unethical in itself and dangerous as a precedent."
At the U.N. headquarters in New York, the U.S. objected
to human cloning, calling it (1) an unethical experimentation
on a child to be; (2) Cloning would deliberately saddle
the clone with the genetic make up of a person who has already
lived; (3) Cloning would make women's bodies a commodity
and (4) it would be a giant step toward a society in which
life is created for convenience.
Echoing the convictions of most nations, the Bush statement
condemned reproductive cloning, which would be to have a
clone come to birth. The Bush position, however, also condemned
therapeutic cloning, or clone and kill, which would create
living human embryos for experimentation and then kill them.
Happily, the usual right, left, conservative, liberal split
at the U.N. is not apparent here, as several European countries
have sided very conclusively with the United States, e.g.,
Spain said, "It is considered that a human being exists
from the moment that a new unique and distinct genome arises,
either different or identical to that of another human being."
Spain believes that it is necessary to reach an agreement
on the universal prohibition of cloning of human beings.
UNFPA And Defective Condoms
In April, a shipment of ten million defective condoms from
the United Nation's Population Fund was seized by the Tanzanian
Government at the port of Dar es Salaam. It seems that the
condoms leaked. They were tested by the Tanzanian Bureau
of Standards. The entire shipment, worth almost one million
dollars, will be destroyed.
Lithuania Petition
On very short notice, pro-lifers in Lithuania held a press
conference, together with Catholic, Protestant, and Russian
Orthodox bishops at the Parliament. At that time they presented
the members of Parliament with 70,000 signatures against
passage of a law on "artificial fertilizations and
abortions." This was the largest pro-life action in
Lithuania since World War II.
Israeli Army Plans to Subsidize Abortifacients
The Israeli Army is planning to subsidize the cost
of providing abortifacient drugs to its female soldiers.
How absolutely stupid. How definitely unpatriotic. Israel
is a tiny country. Its Jewish citizens are overwhelmingly
outnumbered by its hostile neighbors. If we were to become
a patriotic Israeli citizen for the moment, we would wonder
how could any patriotic Israeli explain why a woman soldier
will be doing more for her country by killing a tiny embryonic
Israeli citizen, than she would be by carrying that child
to term and presenting her nation with another man or woman?
Ban
The Federal Cabinet in Australia has banned destructive
research involving human embryos created by invitro fertilization.
One year ago, an all-party parliamentary committee recommended
that lethal research could be allowed on embryos "left
over from IVF." This reverses that recommendation.
IUDs In China
According to BBC News (20 March), China's State Family Planning
Commission reported that 46% of Chinese couples are using
intrauterine devices. This compares, for instance, to Britain
where the figure is 5%. An IUD does not prevent conception,
but does prevent the one-week-old human embryo from implanting
in the womb. It therefore is a known abortifacient.
Assisted Reproduction Equals More Deformities
According to two major articles in the New England Journal
of Medicine, 3-7-02, pp. 725-730, 731-737, researchers report
that infants conceived through invitro fertilization or
intracytoplasmic sperm injection have "twice as high
a risk of a major birth defect as naturally conceived infants."
This is present in both single and multiple pregnancies.
Further, "The use of assisted reproductive technology
accounts for a disproportionate number of low-birth-weight
and very-low-weight infants." This includes invitro
fertilization, frozen embryo transfer and donor embryo transfer.
IVF Equals More Neuro Defects
In the February 9th issue of the Lancet, The Washington
Post reports that Swedish researchers compared 5,680 children
conceived by in vitro fertilization with 11,360 children
conceived naturally. The children conceived by IVF were
twice as likely to be treated for a neurological problem
and 4 times more likely to have cerebral palsy or a developmental
delay. Other common diagnoses included congenital malformation,
mental retardation, chromosomal aberration, and behavior
disorders. The authors suggest that the problems encountered
were due largely to multiple births rather than the IVF
procedure, but offered no documentation for their opinion.
Sperm Abnormality Increases With Age
Certain fetal abnormalities, particularly Downs Syndrome,
have been known to increase with a woman's age. It has been
generally assumed that some similar impact of age was probably
also present in the male. Now we have a publication that
may explain part of this. According to a study appearing
in the European Journal of Human Genetics, Dr. Josep Ergozcue
at the University Autonoma in Barcelona, has shown that
a man's sperm can contain chromosomal abnormalities that
can lead to birth defects. These abnormalities increase
by 17 percent with each passing decade of his life. They
specifically noted that the incidence of double copies of
chromosome 21, which can cause Downs Syndrome, increased
by 11.4 percent with each passing decade.
Another Parkinson's Transplant
According to BBC news, 9 April 2002, we hear a report of
a new cell transplant in treatment of Parkinson's disease.
In this case, the scientists isolated adult stem cells from
the patient's own brain. They grew them in the lab and then
re-injected them into the patient's brain. The report states
that, more than two years after the original treatment,
the patient still has substantial improvement. Production
of the vital chemical dopamine has decreased, but most symptoms
have not returned to date. Will this be another of a long
line of similar attempts over the last twenty years, all
of whom showed some initial improvement, which then dissipated?
Time will tell.
Court Permits AIDS Treatment in South Africa
Recalling the controversy in South Africa - the pro and
con on giving medication to pregnant women to prevent AIDS
in their babies - we report a positive development. The
issue was taken to their National Constitutional Court.
The Court handed down a decision instructing the government
to order the immediate use of Nevirapine to HIV-infected
pregnant women. Clear guidelines are due. According to court
documents, 24% of pregnant women in South Africa are HIV
positive. An estimated 70,000 babies are infected each year
through mother-to-child transmission of HIV. Nevirapine
is undisputed as an effective treatment. Its use will result
in the prevention of at least 10 infant deaths every day.
New Sterilization Technique
A selective tubal occlusion, using Assure, is being promoted
as a means of permanent birth control without an abdominal
incision. It is being marketed by developer, Conceptus Inc.,
in several European countries and Canada. It uses small
coils inserted through the cervix and into the fallopian
tubes. This is supposed to cause scar tissue to grow and
to permanently block the tubes. The company predicts that
it will be available "in every market in Europe by
late 2002." It has submitted an approval application
to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Re-program Cells Without Cloning?
On May 1st, in the journal Nature Technology, scientists
from Norway and the U.S. describe how they have taken ordinary
skin cells and, without the use of cloning techniques or
embryonic stem cells, have transformed them into T cells.
These are key immune system cells. "The message here
is that we're developing an entirely new approach to tissue
replacement therapy that avoids the issues related to cloning
and embryonic stem cell research…it shows that tissues
can be generated from adult cells without the need to destroy
embryos." Briefly stated, they punched holes in mature
skin cells and soaked them in a solution made from immune
system cells. After a period, "they turned them into
cells that look and act like T cells." Let's watch
this one very closely, friends. It could simply replace
the entire effort now being generated through stem cells
and cloning.
Cures With Adult Stem Cells
In Newcastle, Australia, a 74-year-old man had had three
heart bypass operations and was in end-stage coronary failure.
They took stem cells from his bone marrow and injected them
into the wasted muscle of his heart. If this works, this
will stimulate the growth of blood vessels into his heart
muscles, reducing chest pain and increasing the strength
of the heart. To date, we have a cautiously optimistic report
as to his progress.
In Ottawa, Canada, doctors have used adult stem cells to
treat multiple sclerosis. Again, the cells were taken from
the bone marrow of each individual patient. The doctors
then destroyed each of the four patients' immune systems
with chemotherapy. They then injected the stem cells into
their bodies, which took hold and regenerated the blood-forming
and immune systems of those four patients. Six months afterwards,
the first patient was found to have no evidence of multiple
sclerosis on MRI scans. The other three cases followed with
similar results. In a cautiously optimistic statement, they
publicized, "The cure in these cases can be lasting
remissions and may not require any further intervention
with more aggressive drugs."
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