What became of all those eggs?

The Korean veterinarian, Woo Suk Hwang,paid for and otherwise procured hundreds - maybe a thousand - of human oocytes that were supposedly used in his now-debunked research to produce human cloned embryonic stem cells. (For history - see this AAAS press release from May which emphatically repeats the "unpaid donor" line)

What actually happened to those cells?

Another Roe

Roe Yung Hye, dean of research at Seoul National University, that is. Dr. Roe is the lead man cited by the New York Times as revealing that the University has determined that none of the 11 cloned human embryonic stem cells reported in Science this last June exist. They probably never did.

The NYT is also reporting that two of the female researchers on the team have received money from Hwang or his associates. The Washington Post reports that some of this money was delivered by the Korean spy agency, the National Intelligence Service. It seems that the government - or some powerful representatives of the Korean government - wanted to avoid the shame that the Nation would face.

Woo Suk Hwang, the Korean veterinarian and erst-while "cloning king," has filed a legal complaint with authorities that some of his reported human cloned embryo stem cell lines were switched by someone else - but he's also been accused by his own university of intentional fabrication of the report in the first place.

The Seoul National University committee charged with investigating their celebrity researcher has determined that Hwang had only produced 2 - not 11 - stem cell lines at the time that his report was published in the journal, Science.

As I post tonight, I've been watching an old Robert Mitchum movie, "Foreign Intrigue." The 1956 story about blackmail and murder, all tied up in money, nationalism, and secrecy is less far fetched than the cloning intrique of 2005.

Snips and snarls

Bioethics.net has a cute post today about the origins of Snuppy the Cloned Dog.

But, the editors - and Art Caplan, who is not, but might as well be an editor - can't resist doing what they were complaining about others doing.

On the same day as the note about Snuppy - and many more covering the disaster that is Scientific integrity this year but not too far removed in time from great support for the Korean veterinarian who may or may not have cloned people and dogs, Hwang - Caplan has a signed post attacking the credibility of Wesley Smith and the Discovery Institute. Seems a case of people in glass houses throwing sooty pots.

Jones didn't and can't "discredit" anything. He only ruled against one particular method and declared his opposition to motives.

The court system should be thought of as similar to the reporting on scientific research. We've had a very graphic lesson that first reports in the journals aren't the final word. And not all scientists have the highest integrity and motives. Judges are fallible and can be overturned (Glucksberg on the "right-to-die", Dred Scott on slavery are two cases that come to mind). This ruling will be reviewed.

Science and law should be arenas of ideas, not personalities and personal attacks.

While waiting for the review of the Dover school case, I'm going to look at the beauty of creation, or nature.

The fake science drinking game

A new drinking trend to substitute for the 'poktanju' (bombshot) culture has surfaced during year-end celebrations among working people. Dubbed the "Hwang Woo-suk poktanju", it involves creating 11 glasses of drinks, numbering them 2 to 12. Of these, no. two and three are made of 'fake' drinks such as water instead of beer.

The Korea Herald reports a new fad. I'm not sure about the socio-psychological meaning of drinking games, but scientific integrity is becoming an oxymoron.

Great news: Umbilical Cord funding passed Congress!

The Senate finally stopped holding the funding for umbilical cord blood banking and databanking hostage to embryonic stem cell research funding, after passage in the House in May of this year, and the President signed the Bill today.

Tom Harkin and the rest of the pro-clone-and-embryo-destruction crowd would rather have the embryonic stem cell research funding (Which unfortunately included "Republicans" Orin Hatch and Arlen Specter), but they're bound to eventually see that research funding is research funding. After all, human cloning is not doing so well in the rest of the world, with some of the disputed pictures from the Korean veterinarians' efforts showing up in an earlier publication, where they weren't labeled as cloned.

Irving Weissman, who has money and a job at stake in both adult and embryonic stem cells, says that the

My granddaughter was born with some unidentified genetic defect - the hemotologist couldn't even guess - and was unable to make enough white blood cells from birth at 31 weeks. Her top Absolute Nucleocyte Count was 1.8 - White Blood Cell count usually totaled under 2. Her platelets dropped regularly and, despite daily Nupogen and Epogen shots, her WBC and then red blood cell count fell. she got near-weekly bone marrow biopsies and blood tests, a few platelet transfusions and only one RBC transfusion. Before her first birthday, she began evaluation for a bone marrow transplant and even though no family members matched, she was lucky enough to have four non-related matches.

Then, she was offered a chance to be one of the first candidates for an umbilical cord blood "bone marrow" transplant, which she received at 15 months of age at Cook's Children's hospital in Fort Worth Texas.

Her donor was a boy, her new bone marrow karyotype is 46 XY. (She's the only person I actually know whose karyotype - two of them - I've seen) The match was about 70%, if I recall correctly.

She's incredibly healthy 4 years later. No need ever for anti-rejection drugs. She even had an open fracture when a boy at school closed a door on her finger - grew back pretty bone and finger tip (did you ever try to keep a cast clean and dry on a 5 year old?)

The bone marrow and umbilical cord transplants are, I believe, our best hope for the future of regenerative medicine research.The UBC stem cells are proving more and more pliable, and several different populations of multipotent stem cells have been produced from UBC and bone marrow sources. Much more than any hype or hope about embryonic creation and destruction.

It looks like most of the Korean stem cell reports were falsified and/or exaggerated. But, the traditional lines are being drawn by the elitists who would define human beings as those who are "persons," and those who are not.

Bioethics.net.com:

""Doerflinger and other critics of stem-cell research are quick to forget about the merits of the science or the needs of the sick and to use the Korean scandal to impugn what their moral compass unerringly tells them must be abhorrent -- seeking to take stem cells out of human embryos made from a human egg and DNA from a skin cell.""

It's disingenuous to say that the cloned human embryos in question are an egg and a skin cell. And the editors don't appear to be aware of their own biases and too quick to claim bias on the part of Mr. Doerflinger.

As one of those in favor of stem cells as long as you don't kill someone - even an embryonic someone - it seems to me that the only source of an internal honesty or integrity are either the respect for fellow humans or the fear of punishment and humiliation. From the base of respect for other humans it's logical that Mr. Doerflinger and I would not approve of creating and killing human embryos for their parts.

We've had years of arguing the status of the human embryo and each scandal is worse than the last. But the limits keep being pushed for for some terrible, sad story. The last limit is now the justification for going beyond the next.

In the meantime, the results have been stolen embryos (UCalIrving, another one of Schatten's bad relationships), IVF specialists who use their own sperm to "help" their clients, and more human individuals excluded from the protection given to the currently defined "human persons."

The re-definition of humans to "persons" is the first lie.

AROWS: Estrogen for everyone!

"I knew it! More 'scientific' fakery! I want my estrogen, and I want my estrogen, now!" So declared the spokeswoman of AROWS, shouted as she fanned her flushed face at the press conference held this morning. 'Post AROWSal women have been misled for the last time. We will demand to know what he knew and when he knew it!" (AROWS = Age Related Ovarian Wasting Syndrome - it's a joke, Readers.)

There's a report on that bastion of medical reporting, MSNBC.com, about the flaws in the Prempro study on women and heart disease. Of course the medicine combination was not enlightening on heart disease prevention in nature: it did not mimic nature.

The point is that some studies show helpful effects, some don't. For some reason women don't get their heart attacks until later than men, and we also have periodic changes in estrogen rather than testosterone. The take home should be: there hasn't been a decent study, yet.

"And your little dog, too!"

Snuppy could be a fake!

Money, sex (okay,gametes), and power.

The cloning and embryonic stem cell money fervor reminds me of the scandals when a preacher or priest is caught in sin. In the meantime, no one seems to understand that there might not have been any human cloned embryonic stem cells, and scientific credibility may never be the same.

For the last five years, we've been asked to place our hands on the radio and send in our money for the promise of a miracle cure. And now, it looks like the latest, loudest scientific missionary - the veterinarian, Wu Suk Hwang, has sinned big time.


Science is a religion for many in today's world. On the TV show Grey's Anatomy, at least one of the characters compared belief in a higher power with believing in Santa Claus and proclaimed her faith in Science and its miracles, rather than having faith in a higher Power. (Every one of the interns needs a good anti-depressant, in my opinion.)

The mascara is running over at Bioethics.com: the editors (and Arthur Caplan, who is not an editor, but acts like one)are crying over their own reputation, but stll can't post without somehow making snide remarks about Karl Rove, Leon Kass, and/or the protection of human life. Nigel Cameron, Wesley Smith and Richard Doerflinger have been sought out for quotes by the NYTimes, since they might have been right all along about the hype attached to embryonic stem cells.

Then, we get the daily "I have sinned!!! (but not that bad)" chest beatings by Hwang, et. al., and front row seats to schisms and heresy and flat out lies about cloned human embryonic stem cells:

The event that led to Dr. Hwang's downfall, after a month of sniping at certain puzzling aspects of his published work, was the posting of a pair of duplicate photos on two Korean Web sites.

One of the new duplicate photos appears in the June Science article about the 11 patients and a second in the Oct. 19 issue of a lesser-known journal, The Biology of Reproduction, where it was reported as being of a different kind of cell.

In the Science article, the cell colony was labeled as being the fifth of Dr. Hwang's human embryonic cell lines derived from a patient's cells, but in the Biology of Reproduction article it was designated as an ordinary embryonic cell line generated in the MizMedi hospital in Korea, presumably from surplus embryos created in a fertility clinic.

Critics cited the duplication as confirming suspicions that Dr. Hwang had never successfully cloned any adult human cell and that his Science photos might instead show just human embryonic cell lines derived in the usual way from fertility clinic embryos.

Dr. Roh's statements make that now seem exactly what happened.

Dr. Roh, the superintendent of MizMedi, was asked by The New York Times on Wednesday to say which type of cell was represented in the photos. Dr. Roh was the senior author of the article in Biology of Reproduction, which Dr. Hwang did not sign. Dr. Roh replied by e-mail that the photo had come from a large computer file of stem cell colonies and that a colleague had accidentally chosen one of the patient-derived colonies to illustrate the Biology of Reproduction article.

Dr. Roh had heard about the error just two hours earlier, he wrote in his e-mail message, and had already written to the editor of the journal requesting that the article be withdrawn immediately. "I really apologize again to have made a big mistake as a principal investigator," he wrote.

Embryonic stem cells from bone marrow

Thanks to a lead from FreeRepublic.com, here's another great story on adult stem cells - these mimic the cell markers of embryonic stem cells! And they have been induced to produce pancreas, kidney and nerve cells.


Now,

Back to the circus - Scientific integrity has never taken such a hit.

Will Hwang withdraw his paper on human stem cells?

Even Scientific American is reporting that Roh, one of the doctors who helped procure the embryos, is saying that the stem cells were fabricated.

Cloning blow up: A great summary

Richard Doerflinger has written a great summary of the issues and personalities surrounding the cloning implosion.

And, thanks to ProLifeBlogs, I found that another blogger called the scandal a "house of cards." Good links and info on Marlowe's Shade.

"Implosion" of Cloners

Think of a house of cards, and there's a strong wind blowing the fallen cards all over the place.

The work of Korean veterinarian, Dr. Woo Suk Hwang, the leader in cloning research until a couple of weeks ago, is under fire from his own former staff, colleagues and the press. Science, the Journal that published (see, "Korean team speeds up creation of cloned human stem cells") the report concerning the production of 11 human embryonic stem cell lines derived from cloned embryos, has been asked to retract the article (Sorry, subscription only - look at thte bottom of this post for quotes) by one of the co-authors and a pretty impressive list of names. One of the detractors is Ian Wilmut, who gained fame for cloning Dolly the sheep.

Personally, I'm concerned about what the blow up could mean for scientific research and reporting in general. The big question is, like so much of science these days, an echo of the political questions of "who knew, and when." More than likely prejudices for and against cloning, embryonic stem cells and eugenics played a large part in both the early enthusiastic acceptance of the first report and the fuss and bother we're going to see in the next year.

Now, add in the FDA, Merck and Vioxx.

Where is the scientific process in these dramas and how do we trust any thing we read if Science and a group of supposed leaders can be fooled? And were they really fooled?

Thanks to Bioethics.net for many of the links.

I do hope that Dr. Hwang gets well. He's been in and out of the hospital, reportedly with bleeding ulcers, and seeking solace at a Buddhist monastery.


From the letter to Science:

Human Embryonic Stem Cells
Ian Wilmut, Michael D. West, Robert Lanza, John D. Gearhart, Austin Smith, Alan Colman, Alan Trounson, Keith H. Campbell
". . . In addition to a willingness to facilitate the independent verification of published results, it may be helpful to institute an internet database to publish the DNA fingerprinting and microsatellite data on new lines to ensure against the cross-contamination of cell cultures or scientific misconduct."

"I want your organs"

As reported by the Daily Pennsylvanian, Arthur Caplan, PhD, director of the University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics, and faculty member in the Medical Ethics department,gave a talk at the University of Pennsylvania conference entitled, "'I Want Your Organs: How Should We Get Donors and Who Should Get Their Parts?"

Really? Couldn't they come up with a better, more professional title?

I'm sure that this was a fairly straightforward talk to faculty, residents and students (both undergraduates and med students) about organ donation and the supply of organs.

Just as this post got your attention with the headline, I'm sure that the title of the conference was intended to catch the attention of the intended audience.

It looks as though Dr. Caplan may favor the "assumed donor" programs of other countries, rather than our purposeful, consent required process in the US. I would argue against the implied or assumed consent for cadaver donation. I believe that any organ donation should require specific consent, at least from the loved ones who are left behind, if not by the donor himself.

I'm a big proponent of ethical organ donation. However, I am uncomfortable with sensationalizing the subject and the risk of "comodification" or marketing and trivializing of our bodies.

Whatever we are, we can measure and experience only through our bodies, which are more than interchangable parts. If there is to be any respect for one another, the body must be the target of that respect.

I would like to point out that organ donation is not an all or nothing act. If you are uncomfortable with "donating your face," make it known to your loved ones, write it down and your wishes should be honored.

Stem Cells: Bioethicist Hurlbut on Alternative Sources

Some of you may be familiar with teratomas and molar pregnancies from arguments with abortion advocates. These are often the focus of some "yes, but,,,," in the attempt to "prove" that the embryo is not a human being. These are the result of gametes that begin dividing and which can mimic some of the signs and symptoms of pregnancy in a woman's body, but which are never embryos.

One of my favorite columnists, Kathryn Jean Lopez of National Review Online, has an interview with Dr. William B. Hurlbut concerning his ideas on alternative sources of stem cells and the nature of human personhood. Be sure and take a look at the conversation, and read to the bottom, where the dishonesty of the Korean cloning Veterinarian, Hwang, is discussed.

Altered Nuclear Transfer is a theoretical way to stimulate a construct that will grow embryonic stem cells without ever growing an embryo.

When I first heard about the proposition, I was one of those convinced that the technique would involve creating a disabled embryo for research purposes. The interview covers that controversy and confirms that he would not be a party to any unethical procedure. He is committed to the idea of proving the technique in animal models before any research with human DNA.

Essentially, the idea is to create a tumor or a culture which could be used instead of cloned or IVF embryos to study development and disease. As in cloning, donor DNA from a somatic cell would be used. However, the DNA would be altered before it is inserted into an oocyte or otherwise induced to divide and differentiate. The alteration would be to a gene - which gene is still unknown - that controls early embryonic development.



I've said it before: I'm convinced that all of this early research will lead to techniques for regenerative medicine in situ, using environmental stimulators and recruitment factors to allow each of us to heal our own bodies. We just have to hope that our influence and the honor of scientists - or their distaste for controversy and lack of funding - will keep the loss of nascent human lives to a minimum.

Pro-abortion lawyer argues in favor of parental notification

Jonathan Turley has an editorial in USAToday chiding pro-abortion activists for their opposition to parental involvement in a daughter's abortion.

Pro-choice advocates would make abortion the only absolute right in our Constitution, even though it was not fully recognized by the Supreme Court until 1973. Conversely, parental rights have been recognized since the founding of our Republic but are routinely dismissed when they collide with the almighty right to an abortion.

Mr. Turley does a great job discussing the nature of "absolute" rights and the all or nothing attitude of pro-abortion activists.

However, I would describe "rights" a bit differently. Rights are better thought of as "negative rights." It's not that I have an absolute right to freedom of speech, but that I have the right not to be silences - to expect you not to try to prevent me from speaking and to call on society to aide me if you do force your will on me to be quiet. By the same thinking, I don't have the right to live forever or take whatever my life needs, but I do have the right not to be killed. And to call on society to aid me if you try or to restrain you if you succeed in killing me. Many of us believe society should punish, too. (I'd rather think of this punishment as prevention of further harm, but I'm still working that one out - I'll probably have the answer when I'm 80 years old.)

Negative rights do not demand an action, except by legal representatives and those we hire. They are, in fact, limits on the actions of others where those rights would cause harm. To force involuntary action would be to make the other a slave.

In the case of Mr. Turley's example as to yelling "fire!" in a crowded theater, those of us in the theater have the right not to be placed in harm's way. If there is a fire, we need to know. But if there is no fire, and we and our neighbors are falsely alarmed, risking panic and trampling, then we are placed in harm's way.

Gallup Abortion Poll

Editor and Publisher reported on last month's Gallup Poll on US attitudes and preferences concerning abortion. But, they skewed the results, saying

More than three-fourths of the respondents feel that abortion should be legal in varying circumstances. Thirty-nine percent of the respondents said that abortion should only be legal in a few circumstances.

The fact is that 74% would restrict abortion, at least in some circumstances. 39% who would restrict abortion in most circumstances, plus the 16% who would ban abortion outright and an additional 16% who would make abortion illegal, at least in some circumstances. It just depends on how you read the numbers, I guess.

At least E&P covered the poll. Not many others did.
There was very limited coverage of the November 2005 Gallup poll concerning the general US approval of limitations on abortion, with only slightly more attention to the numbers concerning parental consent and notification.

Unfortunately, the poll results themselves require subscription , and so, most people are dependent on media sources to see them. Well, here they are:


2005 Nov 11-13
Legal under any circumstances 26%
Legal under most circumstances 16%
Legal in only a few circumstances 39%
Illegal in all circumstances 16%
No Opinion 2%


In fact, those numbers have been very stable over the last 30 years, with approximately 50-55% choosing "under certain circumstances" every year, going as high as 61% in 1997. "Legal under any circumstances" has been consistently under 30%, except for the years 1990-1992, rising to 34% in June and July 1992.That was the only year that the "legal under circumstances dropped to 49%.

Last month's poll included a question about parental consent for minor girls, but did not ask about notification of parents (The focus of the Supreme Court testimony last week). That poll showed that 69% of those polled are in favor of consent, which is a higher duty than simply letting the parents know about the abortion.

Most U.S. adults think parents should not just be notified, but should have to give their permission, before a minor daughter has an abortion. For more than a decade, Gallup has found roughly 7 in 10 Americans favoring laws that require women under 18 to receive parental consent for any abortion. The latest poll, conducted Nov. 11-13, finds 69% in favor and 28% opposed to such laws.

and, in fact,

However, rather than being solidly opposed to parental consent, abortion rights advocates are somewhat closely divided on the issue. Nearly half of those who think all abortions should be legal favor parental consent laws; just 52% oppose them. The majority (58%) of those who think abortions should be legal in most circumstances say they favor such laws.

Clone lies - small and large

New updates on the problems with the South Korean cloning and embryonic stem cell program: missing scientists and accusations of fraud in reporting results and publishing credits.

Forbes online reports that the veterinarian who headed the cloning project is in seclusion at a Buddhist temple.

Besides accusations that the oocytes were aquired in questionable circumstances (donation for pay, concerns with informed consent, and abuse of Ph.D. candidates), now there are questions about the actual results.

Nature has a piece today in drug discovery @ nature.com on the multiple scandals, including questions about the patent credit given to one researcher, who was not even one of the co-authors:

Young Mo Koo, a bioethicist at Korea's University of Ulsan, says Hwang has not addressed enough questions about his involvement with the egg donors: There needs to be an investigation by an independent party.

For example, Hwang claims to have known nothing of the payments until a few days before his confession when Roh told him. Yet in April 2004 he told Nature that he had himself arranged many of the donors at the hospital concerned. Roh was awarded 40% of the patent resulting from the paper, on which he was not an author. He says he does not know why Hwang offered him so much but that it was not compensation for providing the eggs. I don't need any rewards, he says. Hwang has not disclosed his expenditures or budget for the project, saying only that all funds came from private sources.

The extent to which a junior member of his laboratory might have felt pressure to donate is also under debate. The student spoken to by Nature last April showed no signs of having been coerced by Hwang. During a 28-minute interview, she proudly described how her patriotism and concern for those with spinal injuries had inspired her to donate. Nature was unable to contact the other researcher, who is since thought to have moved to the United States. But according to Roh, she felt obliged to donate after making mistakes early in the experiment that wasted eggs and set the team back by months. I think it's a beautiful story, Roh told Nature, referring to both women's donations.

Can someone define "politically-motivated"?

A couple of weeks ago, I had a ton of fun with the Women's Bioethics Project. They released a report that was titled "God's Bioethics." (and still is tonight, on the front page and on the "news" page, but I keep expecting them to change that).

I received a comment from Linda McDonald Glenn, JD,LLM,, one of the Founding members, supporters and bloggers of the WBP.

Ms. McDonald thinks I over reacted about the "God's Bioethics" report:

was never intended to be politically-motivated, mean-spirited or divisive -- and like you, I'm not big on the "us" vs "them" labels. In fact, I see lots of ways that both conservatives and progressives could potentially work together on issues.

Okay, if it's not political, devisive, or even mean-spirited, why would Ms. Glenn emphasize political divisions, use words such as "overtly religious," etc.?

Perhaps the Women's Project should look at that information above about the Soros and RWJF money that seeded all those end of life and assisted suicide (which, are not all the same) organizations and bioethics centers at major universities - neither the money nor the organizations are "overtly religious" or "conservative."

Housekeeping, new links

I've added some links to the sidebar, changed the look of the blog and am trying to discover the way to widen the posting column. I've also edited the profile to be shorter. More "stuff" and less "about the stuff." (and it should make "jimmy" happy.)

Be sure and check out some of the new links.

Bioethics.com, run by the same people as the website for the Center for Bioethics and Human Dignity, has a new blog that is a great resource for up to date bioethics news. I'm so glad that they've started blogging.

Wesley J. Smith's blog is great reading.

I've also added links to two sites that review the history of bioethics. The Consortium on Law and Values in Human in Health, the Environment and the Life Sciences from the University of Minnesota has a Video Archive with seminars and lectures by the pushers and movers of Bioethics since the year 2000. Unfortunately, most of the featured speakers are pro-embryonic stem cells and cloning. (By the way, can you imagine a "pro-life" consortium that puts "Life Sciences" after the Environment?)

The UMN Center for Bioethics program is one of the oldest in the nation. Faculty includes Susan Wolfe, Ronald Cranford and Jeffry Kahn.

That second site, LifeTree.org, details the history of the "right to die" movement, including the support of the Robert Woods Johnson Foundation (millions to National Public telelvision, paid for supplements to the Hastings Report, and "educated" commercial television writers and producers about end of life care) and George Soros who gave well over 15 million dollars in seed money to various organizations that eventually became "Last Acts."

Both Soros and RWJF are responsible for startups of hospices and Bioethics centers at multiple universities and funded many of the legal actions. All that money puts a slightly different slant on The Women's Bioethics Project claims that the big money only goes to what they call "God's Bioethics."

Clones, lies and research

If the Korean veterinarian, Dr. Wu Suk Hwang, will not tell the truth about his procurement of oocytes, what won't he lie about?

From the December 2004 in Science article (sorry, subscription only) on the production of one cell line from over 200 human oocytes:

Fresh oocytes and cumulus cells were donated by healthy women for the express purpose of SCNT stem cell derivation for therapeutic cloning research and its applications. Before beginning any experiments, we obtained approval for this study from the Institutional Review Board on Human Subjects Research and Ethics Committees (Hanyang University Hospital, Seoul, Korea). Donors were fully aware of the scope of our study and signed an informed consent form (a summary of the informed consent form is available in the supporting online text); donors voluntarily donated oocytes and cumulus cells (including DNA) for therapeutic cloning research and its applications only, not for reproductive cloning; and there was no financial payment. A total of 242 oocytes were obtained from 16 volunteers (there were one or two donors for each trial) after ovarian stimulation:

I would like to see those consent forms.

Pay women to donate eggs?

Reading more on that last post on Ronald Green (scroll down, or click here for permanent link) from July 2005 July, 2005,

"What is the point of these bans against paying for eggs? A ban on payment for embryos makes sense. Embryos that are available for stem-cell research are spares remaining from in-vitro fertilization procedures. Whatever effort or expense went into them lies in the past. It also makes sense to prohibit the selling of sperm for research purposes. This is hardly an onerous or risky task.

"But eggs are another matter. Eggs should not be sold, but women who produce eggs for research should be compensated for the time and effort involved. They must undergo a series of painful injections with drugs to stimulate their ovaries and undergo a collection procedure that involves inserting a large needle through the vaginal wall into each ovary. The drugs can cause mood swings, and there are rare but life-threatening risks associated with them. Why would anybody do this without appropriate compensation?"

Hubris, clones, ethics déjà vu

Ronald M. Green joined Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology had a letter to the editor in Nature last week, bemoaning the “fact” that the Koreans had won the “stem cell” “race.” (Correspondence: Bush's policy stopped US gaining stem-cell lead Nature 438, 422 (24 November 2005) (Sorry, subscription only)


Of all the people in the world, religion professor Ronald Green should know about cutting ethical corners for pay.

From the letter:

“Why did the South Koreans win this race despite our early lead?
“In our view, President George W. Bush's restrictive policy on funding stem-cell research was a major factor. SCNT research is expensive— a full research programme costs hundreds of thousands of dollars each year. At that time, ACT was a privately financed company, and from the summer of 2001 on, it was operating in an extremely hostile funding environment, with no hope of federal support. There is no reason to believe that ACT was a special case. Indeed, the stem-cell area as a whole has continued to encounter difficulties in garnering sufficient financial support.”

Talk about irony: complaints about the hostile environment encountered by an industry that’s riddled with questionable ethics for hire, from a man who is responsible for quite a bit of the suspicion. If only ACT had kept quiet about the bovine-human embryo until more was known. If only ACT had kept quiet about their own human cloned embryos until more was known.

If only ACT had kept quiet about the Korean “win” until more was known about their practices of buying oocytes and influencing Ph.D. candidates to donate.
If only Green and ACT could learn the difference between embryonic stem cells and ethical stem cells.

After abortion: 250% increased risk of death for mother

Decreased by half after birth, compared to women who weren't pregnant in the last year.

And none of the mainstream media outlets notice.

There is excellent coverage at RedState.org and Lifesitenews.org.

This new study is out of Finland. Which is a country which has socialized medicine and records allowing the researchers to correlate deaths and pregnancy, abortion.

In contrast, many states, including my home, Texas, have laws mandating information considering post-partum depression.

Try a Google news search. There's a chance there will be more coverage.