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Round-up of stories on adult stem cell research and abortion

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As you know, Obama is making scientific progress and patient care take a back-seat to feminist ideology. He appeases his pro-abortion special interest groups by wasting money on unproven embryonic stem cell research, while neglecting proven therapies based on adult stem cell research. Who cares about patient liberty and curing diseases?

Let’s take a look and see what adult stem cells can do.

UPI reports that adult stem cells can revert to an embryonic state.

U.S. scientists say they have, for the first time, returned adult mouse cells to their embryonic pluripotent state, meaning they can become any cell type.

The University of California-San Francisco researchers said they used tiny molecules called microRNAs to reprogram the cells.

The achievement suggests scientists will soon be able to replace retroviruses and even genes currently used in laboratory experiments to induce pluripotency in adult cells. The researchers said that would make potential stem cell-based therapies safer by eliminating risks posed to humans by these DNA-based methods, including alteration of the genome and risk of cancer.

Adult stem cells provide solutions for stroke victims.

The good news continues to flow about the first stroke patient successfully treated in Houston using the patient’s own adult stem cells. The patient, Roland Henrich, was originally admitted to the emergency room at Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center on March 25, 2009 with signs of stroke–he could not speak and had significant weakness on his right side. Because it was beyond the few hours window for use of the clot-dissolving drug TPA, the adult stem cell trial was his only option. The next day some of his bone marrow was removed, the adult stem cells separated, and returned intravenously to the patient. In less than a week doctors noted that he was recovering remarkably well and had not shown any signs of paralysis. Within 11 days of the treatment Mr. Henrich was walking, climbing stairs unassisted, and said his first word after the stroke, captured on a local news video and surprising his own doctor and leader of the clinical trial, Dr. Sean Savitz. His wife says now he has spoken several single words and phrases and has fed the cows by himself.

Adult stem cells provide solutions for infertile women.

Chinese scientists have published a study in Nature Cell Biology that suggests even older females retain adult stem cells that can stimulate fertility, including the production of more eggs. The evidence is in contrast to the usual dogma that women have a finite number of immature eggs, some of which mature and are ovulated, and that the number of eggs becomes depleted with age. Tilly et al. recently reviewed the evidence for and against production of new eggs after birth. Tilly’s group was one of those recently to challenge the dogma with evidence that new egg production could occur in mammals.

What the Chinese group showed is that ovaries contain stem cells that can produce more eggs, similar to the stem cells in testes that produce sperm.

Adult stem cells provide solutions for healing bones.

Patients confined to wheelchairs have been able to walk or live independently again because their broken bones finally healed, thanks to a drug that stimulates their adult stem cells. Preliminary results presented at the Orthopaedic Research Society meeting found 93% of those with an unhealed bone fracture had significant healing and pain control after treatment for only 8 to 12 weeks. Half of the 145 patients studied had non-healing fractures for 6 months or longer. The drug, teriparatide (Forteo), was approved by the FDA in 2002 for treatment of osteoporosis. A team led by Dr. J. Edward Puzas at the University of Rochester Medical Center discovered that this drug can also boost the body’s bone adult stem cell production to the point that adults’ bones appear to heal at a rate typically seen for young kids.

Adult stem cells provide solutions for diabetes.

Another success for adult stem cells, again treating Type I (juvenile) diabetes patients. As reported in a study published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association, 20 of 23 patients became insulin-independent after treatment with their own bone marrow adult stem cells. This report is a follow-up to the previous report by Voltarelli & Burt in 2007, and includes new patients as well as a longer period to follow the patients. Some of the patients have gone for four years insulin-free. The authors note in the paper that this adult stem cell treatment “remains the only treatment capable of reversing type 1 diabetes in humans.”

Adult stem cells provide solutions for treating ligaments and tendons

Recent news from London that adult stem cells will be used to repair damaged tendons and ligaments in patients. This isn’t really a new technique, but the interesting thing is that the technique is now used routinely in horses and other animals. Finally, the realization has hit that this adult stem cell treatment might work for people, too. More than 1,500 race horses have been treated using the same process, and follow-up data suggest a 50 percent reduction in re-injury over a three year period, compared with conventional treatment.

We don’t need to kill innocent unborn humans in order to make medical progress. We don’t need an excess of 32 million males due to anti-female sex-selection abortions. And we don’t need to subsidize Planned Parenthood with 350 million dollars when they already have net assets of 1 billion dollars.

And lastly, some good news. In contrast to the Democrats anti-life stance, Republicans in the Oklahoma legislature voted to ban embryonic stem cell research. Now that’s progress.

Polemics

Is it OK for Christians to marry non-Christians?

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I want to draw your attention to a talk given by William Lane Craig. Bill is the ablest defender of the Christian faith operating today. You may remember Bill from such famous debates as “Does God Exist?” with Austin Dacey, “Did Jesus Rise from the Dead?” with Bart Ehrman, or “Is Goodness Without God Good Enough?” with Paul Kurtz.

The 32-minute talk is in MP3 format and is available on his web site Reasonable Faith, here. This was Bill’s chapel address to Biola University students, and he is introduced by his son, John, a Biola grad. As you listen to the talk, and reflect on the quotations that I will reproduce below from his writings, the question “is it OK to marry a non-Christian?” will be answered.

In the talk, it becomes clear that Bill’s wife Jan plays an enormous role in his success. Indeed, you will see that if it were not for her, he never would have gotten either of his doctorates, or even his second Masters degree. Just imagine: Bill Craig with one M.Div pastoring a seeker-sensitive church, instead having 2 MAs and 2 Ph.Ds and stomping Christopher Hitchens with both feet! What a loss!

Here is a quotation that occurs about 11 minutes into the talk, as Bill describes the completion of his Bachelor’s degree at Wheaton:

And it was at Wheaton that my vision began to focus on presenting the gospel in the context of giving an intellectual defense of the faith, to appeal not only to the heart but also to the head, as well. And so I determined that I would go on to seminary for further training.

But, my senior year, in chapel, we heard a speaker who challenged us, before going on to further education, to take a couple of years out, and to wring out the sponge, so to speak, that had been soaking up all that knowledge, and to work with university students while we were still about the same age.

And so I joined the staff of Campus Crusade for Christ for 2 years, and was assigned to Northern Illinois University. And that was where I met my wife Jan. She was a graduate of the University of North Dakota where she had come to faith in Christ. And she had a similar vision for her life of evangelism and discipleship.

And as we worked at NIU together, she with gals and I with the guys, leading students to Christ and discipling them to walk with the Lord, we fell in love. And we decided that we would be more effective if we joined forces and became a team.

It is at this point in the talk where Bill begins to explain just how Jan molded him into the lean, mean debating machine that travels the world striking terror into the hearts of atheists today.

Bill’s first story about Jan occurs early after their marriage while he is working on his first Masters degree at Trinity:

And it was also at that time that I began to see what an invaluable asset the Lord had given me in Jan. I remember I came home from classes one day, and found her at the kitchen table with all the catalogs and schedules and papers spread out in front of her and she said, “look! I’ve figured out how you can get two Masters degrees at the same time that it would normally take to get one! All you have to do is take overloads every semester, go to all full-time summer school and do all these other things, and you can do two MAs in the time it takes to do one!”

And I thought, whoa! Are you sure you really want to make the commitment it takes to do this kind of thing? And she said, “Yeah! Go for it!” And it was then I began to see that God had given me a very special woman who was my supporter – my cheerleader – and who really believed in me. And as long as she believed in me, that gave me the confidence to dream bigger dreams, and to take on challenges that I had never thought of before.

In an article on his web site, he talks about how Jan encouraged him to do his first PhD:

As graduation from Trinity neared, Jan and I were sitting one evening at the supper table in our little campus apartment, talking about what to do after graduation. Neither of us had any clear leading or inclination of what we should do next.

So Jan said to me, “Well, if money were no object, what would you really like to do next?”

I replied, “If money were no object, what I’d really like to do is go to England and do a doctorate under John Hick.”

“Who’s he?” she asked.

“Oh, he’s this famous British philosopher who’s written extensively on arguments for the existence of God,” I explained. “If I could study with him, I could develop a cosmological argument for God’s existence.”

But it hardly seemed a realistic idea.

The next evening at supper Jan handed me a slip of paper with John Hick’s address on it. “I went to the library today and found out that he’s at the University of Birmingham in England,” she said. “Why don’t you write him a letter and ask him if you can do a doctoral thesis under him on the cosmological argument?”

What a woman! So I did, and to our amazement and delight Professor Hick wrote back saying he’d be very pleased to supervise my doctoral work on that subject. So it was an open door!

And in the same article, he explains how Jan encouraged him to get his second Ph.D:

As Jan and I neared the completion of my doctoral studies in Birmingham, our future path was again unclear to us. I had sent out a number of applications for teaching positions in philosophy at American universities but had received no bites. We didn’t know what to do.

I remember it like yesterday. We were sitting at the supper table in our little house outside Birmingham, and Jan suddenly said to me, “Well, if money were no object, what would you really like to do next?”

I laughed because I remembered how the Lord had used her question to guide us in the past. I had no trouble answering the question. “If money were no object, what I’d really like to do is go to Germany and study under Wolfhart Pannenberg.”

“Who’s he?”

“Oh, he’s this famous German theologian who’s defended the resurrection of Christ historically,” I explained. “If I could study with him, I could develop a historical apologetic for the resurrection of Jesus.”

Our conversation drifted to other subjects, but Jan later told me that my remark had just lit a fire under her. The next day while I was at the university, she slipped away to the library and began to research grants-in-aid for study at German universities. Most of the leads proved to be defunct or otherwise inapplicable to our situation. But there were two grants she found that were possibilities. You can imagine how surprised I was when she sprung them on me!

Both of these Ph.D experiences are also described in the talk. And the talk concludes as follows:

I am so thankful to be married to a woman who is tremendously resourceful, tremendously talented and energetic, who could have pursued an independent career in any number of areas, but instead, she has chose to wed her aspirations to mine, and to make it her goal to make me the most effective person I can be, for Christ. And she has been like my right arm in ministry over these many years. And it is a tremendous privilege to be a team with a person like that.

And you young men, I would encourage you, if you marry, to find a gal who shares your vision, not some independent vision, but who is interested in aligning herself with you, and pursuing together a common vision and goal that will draw you [together], so that you will avoid the growing separateness that so often creeps into marriages.

And now you know the rest of Bill’s story. The person you marry will have an enormous influence on the impact you will have for Christ and his Kingdom. It is up to you to decide whether that influence is going to be positive or negative, by deciding if you will marry, and if you do marry, by deciding whom you will marry.

Conclusion

The level of influence of a significant other in a non-platonic relationship greatly impacts your ability to achieve the vocational task that the Lord has set for you. My recommendation is to avoid engaging in any romantic relationship in which self-sacrificial service to the Lord is not the main focus. And remember, physical contact greatly reduces your ability to make objective evaluations.

Today, Christians treat the Christian life as a hobby that we engage in for our benefit. And this includes romantic relationships. One way of screening prospective mates is by assessing how well prepared they are to defend the Lord’s reputation, when it is called into question. An authentic Christian should care enough to have prepared to defend God’s existence and character in public.

UPDATE: New William Lane Craig lecture specifically on the topic of Christian marriage:

  • Healthy Relationships (National Faculty Leadership Conf. 2008) (audio here)

Related posts

Podcasts

IBD: Canada fills Obama’s leadership void

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Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper
Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper

Investors Business Daily had a good post up about how other countries with more conservative leadership are picking up the slack left by Obama’s naive socialism. Canada is led by economist Stephen Harper, who studied the economic theories of F.A. Hayek and other proponents of free-market capitalism. Harper understands what economic policies promote liberty.

Here is an excerpt from the article: (a podcast version is here)

Thus far, the Obama administration seems more interested in continuing its global apology tour, Latin edition, during this weekend’s Fifth Summit of the Americas than he is in leading. His accusations against America are stronger than his promotion of the institutions and treaties that bring authentic democracy and prosperity to our hemisphere.

Obama’s aversion to policies like free trade, which supports liberty and prosperity, is well known:

Today, Obama is paying only lip service to that trade goal while two finished free-trade treaties with friendly American allies Panama and Colombia sit in his desk drawer, unvoted-on in Congress.

He speaks of the U.S. being “distracted by other priorities” but in reality he’s only “distracted” by listening to Big Labor, which has tried to shut Colombia and Panama out of free trade.

In the same way, he’s distracted by the Farm Lobby’s campaign cash and won’t think of ending the senseless tariffs on Brazil’s ethanol — another major free-trade, and energy policy, issue.

He has yet to expend political capital to muscle Congress to put those tariffs and treaties to a vote. If he did, he would show leadership. It’s not going unnoticed by democratic leaders of our hemisphere, who, from Brazil to Chile to Mexico to Peru, are urging him to take action. This is the one issue he should be showing strong leadership on. But he isn’t.

Yes, the world is truly against us because of Obama’s economic ignorance. But there are some liberty-opposing communist dictators that love Obama – because he supports their dictatorships and the repression of common people who don’t even have enough to eat or the opportunity to earn a decent living. IBD continues:

The region’s protectionists can be counted on one hand, and they just happen to be the same countries trying to ruin their own democracies — among them Venezuela, whose de facto dictator, Hugo Chavez, declared at the last summit in 2005 he would “bury” free trade of the Americas. With Obama failing to lead, he’s effectively handing Chavez the leadership, as well as a victory.

He’s also giving Cuba a victory, unilaterally loosening rules for remittances to the island, providing the bankrupt Castro dictatorship with an economic lifeline as well as a fresh pool of visitors to spy on, blackmail and potentially recruit.

Hot Air links to the photos of Obama accepting gifts and shaking hands with dictator Chavez. Hot Air writes:

Via Tapper, the long-awaited meeting between the “destructive force” and the “ignoramus” hath come to pass. There are already a few photos of the encounter at Yahoo News but you have to go to Facebook for the best one. Check out that thousand-watt grin. Funding FARC, imprisoning dissidents, staging wargames with Russia, and of course consolidating dictatorial power — none of it’s enough to ruin a photo op for The One. I hope this at least convinces El Presidente not to throw that Cuba-themed tantrum at the summit that he’s been planning. We deserve something in return for the free propaganda Barry just handed him.

The world opposes Obama’s unliteral war against free trade. Even Russia is disgusted with Obama’s economic naivete. And so is China. But what about Stephen Harper and Canada? IBD’s article continues:

Canada, by contrast, is taking the lead. Prime Minister Stephen Harper said his top priority at the Summit is to champion free trade, in line with the will of the region’s real democracies.

“Our focus for the Summit of the Americas will be about free trade and avoiding other countries moving back to protectionist measures,” Harper’s spokesman said. “Canada’s position is that we must not allow the impact of the (financial) crisis to reverse our hard-fought progress towards freer trade and investment.”

…What a shame that it’s now left to Canada to do the heavy lifting on the actions that will genuinely advance peace and prosperity in our global neighborhood.

According to this just-released news story from CTV, Harper is pledging 4 billion dollars to spur trade with Latin America.

Excerpt:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper is pushing for greater regional co-operation and better hemispheric trade relations at the Summit of the Americas, pledging $4 billion in loan guarantees for Latin American countries.

…Harper said on Saturday that loans to the Inter-American Development Bank will help nations in the region get access to credit and build their economies.

“Canada is taking the lead when it comes to ensuring that countries continue to trade during a time of economic contraction,” said Harper in a statement. “This has not been done before and is a very significant contribution.”

Meanwhile, Obama is making Iran and North Korea feel comfortable about their pursuit of nuclear weapons. What a difference there is between Harper and Obama!

Harper’s recognition of Easter and the importance of religious liberty

Religious liberty is the liberty that I value most. Isn’t it amazing that at a time when Obama is taking steps to greatly reduce the freedom to express Christian convictions in public, that up north the prime minister of Canada is talking about the resurrection of Jesus and the importance of religious liberty as a Canadian tradition?

In case you missed it, here are some videos of Harper on CNN and Fox News, as well one from CNBC with Larry Kudlow. I previously wrote about how Colombia is trying to diversify their economy in the wake of Obama’s snubbing them on the proposed free trade deal.