Judge blocks US funding of destructive embryo research - And what Ireland must do

This week in Washington DC, a federal judge blocked the implementation of President Obama's executive order allowing federal funding of research requiring the destruction of human embryos, saying it was against federal law.

Judge Royce C Lamberth said the legislation enacted in 1996 by Congress, the Dickey-Wicker Amendment, prohibited ‘research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death greater than that allowed for research on fetuses in utero.’

In 1999, in an attempt to get around this clear ban, Harriet S Rabb, a lawyer with the US Department of Health and Human Services came up with an argument that the ban only covered the killing of the embryo, but that the research involving the cells that the embryo was killed to extract was not banned.

Judge Lamberth rejected this: ‘The language of the statute reflects the unambiguous intent of Congress to enact a broad prohibition of funding in which a human embryo is destroyed. This prohibition encompasses all “research in which” an embryo is destroyed, not just “the piece of research” in which the embryo is destroyed’, which was Rabb’s argument.

The Obama administration has pledged to appeal the decision.

The decision by UCC and other Irish third level colleges to allow research on their campuses using cells that needed human embryos to be deliberately destroyed to get them relies on the same ethically phoney distinction.

And the same thirst of the embryo research industry to get their hands on a steady supply of human embryos to extract elements for use in research is evident in the ghoulish recommendations of the 2005 Report of the Commission on Assisted Human Reproduction which the Irish Supreme Court deferred to so conspicuously in its R -v- R decision. The Ethical, Scientific and Legal Issues concerning Stem Cell Research: Opinion, issued in 2008 by the Irish Council for Bioethics, made similar recommendations based on equally fallacious arguments.

Every year since the Commission on Assisted Human Reproduction published its discredited Report, however, in one professionally conducted opinion poll after another carried out for the Pro-Life Campaign, the Irish public has shown itself, by a substantial majority, to be consistently and coherently in favour of the Dáil enshrining protection of the embryo in legislation, as has been done in other EU jurisdictions like Germany and Italy.

Not only that, it is the ethically non-controversial adult stem cell research that is bringing in the breakthroughs in the clinical management and treatment of a range of conditions, not the ethically objectionable embryo-destructive research.

This was confirmed in a review piece by Associated Press Science Writer, Malcolm Ritter, at the start of this month. With the heading, ‘Adult stem cell research far ahead of embryonic’, the article states:

"For all the emotional debate that began about a decade ago on allowing the use of embryonic stem cells, it's adult stem cells that are in human testing today. An extensive review of stem cell projects and interviews with two dozen experts reveal a wide range of potential treatments.

Adult stem cells are being studied in people who suffer from multiple sclerosis, heart attacks and diabetes. Some early results suggest stem cells can help some patients avoid leg amputation. Recently, researchers reported that they restored vision to patients whose eyes were damaged by chemicals.

Apart from these efforts, transplants of adult stem cells have become a standard lifesaving therapy for perhaps hundreds of thousands of people with leukemia, lymphoma and other blood diseases".

You can read the Associated Press article here

Let’s hope the ethical difference between treating someone with their own cells, on the one hand, and on the other hand, destroying another member of the human family in order to get some of their cells to use in research or treat someone else, will be grasped by the Minister for Health and Children, Mary Harney and her officials as they draft the embryo legislation expected this autumn. And let’s hope, too, that they will see and seize the golden opportunity to promote Ireland as an international centre of excellence in adult stem cell research.

'Save the Baby Girl' - Monitors put on Ultrasound Machines in India to prevent female foeticide

A recent BBC News interview showed a doctor in India doing ultrasounds with mothers. Behind him on the wall was a large sign Disclosure of sex of foetus is prohibited under law. But the 2003 law has been largely ignored, with doctors colluding with mothers wanting to identify baby girls before birth so they can abort them.

The report showed a new device called the Silent Observer which records all use of the ultrasound units and uploads it onto a government website where it can be monitored.

Further research yielded a report on this initiative which requires all ultrasound centres in the Indian state of Maharashtra to install and use the Silent Observer and requires online reporting and uploading of the testing done with the ultrasound – a sort of spy in the clinic, to deter doctors from facilitating female foeticide.

The scale of the gender imbalance is highlighted in the fall in the relative number of girls under six years of age. ‘A defining indicator of the grim scenario is the sharp decline over the last decade in the child sex ratio for the age group 0-6 years … from 945 in 1991 to 927 in 2001. Alarmingly, the urban areas, more literate and therefore perceived as being more modern, have shown a huge 29-point drop from 935 in 1991 to 906 in 2001.’ In the state where the ‘Save the Baby Girl’ pilot project was started, Maharashtra, the female sex-ratio fell from 946 in 1991 to 917 in 2001 and the drop was found to correlate with the number of ultrasound centres.

‘The gender composition in south and East Asian countries has worsened over a period of time. The skewed sex ratio indicates gross violation of women’s rights.’ And they acknowledge exacerbation of the problem by modern technologies – ‘The sex determination of foetus by technologies like ultrasound scanning, amniocentesis and in vitro fertilisation has aggravated the situation to an alarming level’ adding ‘if Asia’s sex-ratio was the same as [the] rest of the world, in 2005 Asia’s population would have included almost 163 million more women and girls.’

The root cause, however, is the social and cultural view of the woman as inferior to the man that leads girls to be seen as a costly burden which families have to pay heavily to get rid of in a dowry so that ‘the birth of a girl is seen as a calamity to be avoided.’

The violence against women that gendercide is described as ‘A pernicious form of violence against females in some parts of India has been - and still is – the elimination of the girl through female infanticide. Various methods have been used to extinguish the girl after birth, such as starving, poisoning or crushing her under the bed, etc. We should note that the task of female infanticide was laid upon the woman/mother, as she was considered responsible for bringing the baby girl into existence.’

This ‘Save the Baby Girl’ project is to be welcomed as a step in right direction towards equality of treatment of baby girls in India before and after birth.

You can watch the 4 minute BBC News report here

You can read the full article about this initiative here

'A kind of miracle' - Ciaran Finn-Lynch, the first child in the world to receive a windpipe transplant helped by his own stem cells

Earlier this month, 11-year-old Ciaran Finn-Lynch, originally from Castleblaney, Co. Monaghan, was discharged from Great Ormond Street Hospital in London having made medical history, the first child in the world to undergo a trachea transplant in which his own stem cells were used to ensure a donor windpipe would not be rejected by his body

He was born with Long Segment Tracheal Stenosis, which narrows the windpipe. Previous interventions, starting when he was two-and-a-half, had included attempts to rebuild his airway and inserting metal stents.  Last November, however, the erosion of a stent caused a ‘massive bleed’, prompting the specialists to look at a treatment using his own stem cells to build up a donor windpipe so as to prevent rejection of it by his body.

The operation, carried out in March, was declared a success when the medical team found that the blood supply had returned to the trachea. Professor Martin Elliott, the leader of the Transplant Team, said Ciaran ‘is a wonderful boy who has become a great friend to us all, and he and his infinitely patient family have charmed us all. … 'His recovery has been complicated, as one might expect for a new procedure, and we have kept him under close surveillance, hence the length of time he has been here. … It is wonderful to see him active, smiling and breathing normally.’

This kind of operation, a donor transplant where the patient’s own stem cells are used to prevent organ rejection, was first carried out on Claudia Castillo, a 30-year-old tuberculosis patient, in Barcelona, Spain in June 2008. Professor Martin Birchall said that the success of that operation left us 'on the verge of a new age in surgical care'.

The Irish Independent reports further comments of Professor Birchall on Ciaran’s operation. He said 'This is a completely new approach … the first time this has ever been done in a child. … He is left with a healthy organ made with his own stem cells which in a way is a kind of miracle.’

To read more and watch a 1 minute interview on Ciaran’s operation by Professor Martin Birchall, Professor of Laryngology from University College London, click here.