Tag Archives: Abortion

News

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.

News

It’s official: Obama’s socialism will lead to fascism

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Homeland Security's new enemy!
Homeland Security's worst enemy! (H/T Nice Deb)

Looks like Obama suspended the war on terror abroad… only to start it up again… at home!

What is fascism and how is it caused?

Fascism is the political system that results when the state imposes its values on its citizens and represses individual values. The traditional view of free-market capitalist conservatives is that socialist efforts to “fix” financial inequalities by redistributing wealth in a planned economy inevitably ends in fascism. This is despite the fact that fascism is never the desired or intended result of well-meaning socialists.

This thesis is presented in a famous book called “The Road to Serfdom“, written by Nobel prize winning economist F.A. Hayek. This is the book that guided champions of free-market capitalism and individual liberty such as Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and today, Stephen Harper.

What the Department of Homeland Security wrote

Let’s take a look at the latest report from Barack Obama’s Department of Homeland Security.

Michelle Malkin has the complete story here. (H/T The Western Experience)

Yesterday, Roger Hedgecock and the Liberty Papers posted an unclassified DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis report titled:

Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment.

The “report” (PDF file here) was one of the most embarrassingly shoddy pieces of propaganda I’d ever read out of DHS. I couldn’t believe it was real.

…I spent the day chasing down DHS spokespeople…[and] the press office got back to me and verified that the document is indeed for real.

Below, Michelle has the actual quotes from the DHS report.

Here are some questions for you:
Are you for federalism? Are you for limited government? Are you for immigration law enforcement? Are you pro-life?

If you answered “yes”, then the Obama regime thinks that you are a potential terrorist:

Rightwing extremism in the United States can be broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly antigovernment, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration.

Here are some more questions for you:
Are you a free-market capitalist? Are you in favor of personal responsibility? Are you for legal firearm ownership?

If you answered “yes”, then the Obama regime thinks that you are a potential terrorist:

Rightwing extremists are harnessing this historical election as a recruitment tool. Many rightwing extremists are antagonistic toward the new presidential administration and its perceived stance on a range of issues, including immigration and citizenship, the expansion of social programs to minorities, and restrictions on firearms ownership and use. Rightwing extremists are increasingly galvanized by these concerns and leverage them as drivers for recruitment. From the 2008 election timeframe to the present, rightwing extremists have capitalized on related racial and political prejudices in expanded propaganda campaigns, thereby reaching out to a wider audience of potential sympathizers.

And there’s more in the report:

Over the past five years, various rightwing extremists, including militias and white supremacists, have adopted the immigration issue as a call to action, rallying point, and recruiting tool. Debates over appropriate immigration levels and enforcement policy generally fall within the realm of protected political speech under the First Amendment, but in some cases, anti-immigration or strident pro-enforcement fervor has been directed against specific groups and has the potential to turn violent.

And more:

DHS/I&A assesses that rightwing extremists will attempt to recruit and radicalize returning veterans in order to exploit their skills and knowledge derived from military training and combat. These skills and knowledge have the potential to boost the capabilities of extremists—including lone wolves or small terrorist cells—to carry out violence. The willingness of a small percentage of military personnel to join extremist groups during the 1990s because they were disgruntled, disillusioned, or suffering from the psychological effects of war is being replicated today.

And more:

DHS/I&A will be working with its state and local partners over the next several months to ascertain with greater regional specificity the rise in rightwing extremist activity in the United States, with a particular emphasis on the political, economic, and social factors that drive rightwing extremist radicalization.

The Anchoress, unlike me, is more calm and circumspect. But, with her characteristic perceptiveness, she adds this warning:

Dissent – normal, healthy political dissent – which was “patriotic” just six months ago, and expressed without encumbrance throughout our history (until now) seems to be under attack….

As some of us have noted, everything that was projected on to the Bush administration is finding real expression in the Obama administration. I’m still waiting for the part where those who predicted that “Bush will declare martial law and never allow another election” pooh-pooh the right who say it of Obama. You know it will happen.

So, you see…we’re in a bad place, in these United States.

So let’s be clear. In my opinion, the United States is now on the road to fascism. Every single person who voted for Obama put us on that road to fascism. The United States of the Founding Fathers has been obliterated by the government-run schools, the leftist media, and our own invincible hedonism. Our liberty, and the liberty of nations struggling against socialism, (i.e. – fascism), worldwide, is now in jeopardy.

To end on a positive note, Open Market has something hopeful to say about possible remedies:

Government agencies that investigate people for their “politically incorrect” views can be held liable for violating the First Amendment, as happened in White v. Lee (2000), where a federal appeals court held that federal fair-housing officials could be sued individually for punitive damages for investigating citizens who spoke out against a group home for the disabled (in that case, mentally-ill substance-abusers).

Let’s hope that Bush appointed enough strict constructionist judges, he was pretty good at doing that.

Further study

Nice Deb is making light of the story here by comparing Democrats like Obama’s friend Bill Ayers, (a non-terrorist who just tried to blow some innocent people up), with authentic terrorists like little Republican girls who still believe in the Constitution.

Here are books on liberty that people today don’t read, but they should. They really should. Because God knows, those secularist socialists in the government, and the people who voted them in, sure haven’t. Atheistic communism lead to the deaths of 100 million people in the 20th century alone. Is that what we have to look forward to in this country? Ideas have consequences.

An abridged version of The Road to Serfdom is here.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin’s syndicated column is here.

Commentary

An analysis of the Democrats socialist health care policies

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I would summarize the ideals of Democrats (socialists) as follows:

  1. There are unequal life outcomes in society
  2. Those who have little wealth are the victims of those who produce wealth
  3. We (democrats) must transfer wealth until everyone’s life outcomes are equal, regardless of their life choices
  4. We (democrats) must use government coercion to achieve this equality
  5. Since we (democrats) are so morally superior, we are not obligated to transfer our own wealth to anyone

Consider health care. Some risky lifestyle choices are more likely to require more health care services. The socialist’s goal is to make sure that no one is deterred from making these risky choices. Those who do not engage in these risks must be forced to pay for the health care of those who do choose to take on these risks. That way, everyone is equal in the end.

The way this is done is to make sure that people who don’t engage in risky behaviors cannot pay less for their health care than those who do engage in risky behaviors. Let me explain.

Suppose a safe person S knows that he only needs coverage for catastrophic care, since his lifestyle choices eliminate the need for elective treatments like abortions, birth control, STD medications, sex changes and drug addiction treatments. He can be covered for a very low premium.

Consider another irresponsible, risky person R who is engaged in all kinds of risky behavior. He can be covered for all of the medical services for a very high premium. His own choices expose him to risks that will require more medical services.

Democrats (socialists), solve this problem by forcing S to pay for mandatory health care with a very high premium that covers services he will never use. That way, he is really paying for his own health care, and R’s health care, too.

Take a look at this article I found on Health Care BS. In the article, they cite Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute, who analyzes the health care policies that may be included in the Democrats’ health care reform bill.

This is the one I want to draw your attention to, because this is what single-payer countries like Canada have that causes them so many problems:

An Individual Mandate. Every American will be required to buy an insurance policy that meets certain government requirements.  Even individuals who are currently insured — and happy with their insurance — will have to switch to insurance that meets the government’s definition of acceptable insurance, even if that insurance is more expensive or contains benefits that they do not want or need.

And here is another one that will force employers to lay off American workers because employers have to pay more for the same productivity.

An Employer Mandate. At a time of rising unemployment, the government will raise the cost of hiring workers by requiring all employers to provide health insurance to their workers or pay a fee (tax) to subsidize government coverage.

Yes, that’s right. Socialism attacks businesses. Attacking businesses causes unemployment.

And there’s more:

A Government-Run Plan, competing with private insurance.  Because such a plan is subsidized by taxpayers, it will have an unfair advantage, allowing it to squeeze out private insurance.  In addition, because government insurance plans traditionally under-reimburse providers, such costs are shifted to private insurance plans, driving up their premiums and making them even less competitive. The actuarial firm Lewin Associates estimates that, depending on how premiums, benefits, reimbursement rates, and subsidies were structured, as many as 118.5 million would shift from private to public coverage.   That would mean a nearly 60 percent reduction in the number of Americans with private insurance.  It is unlikely that any significant private insurance market could continue to exist under such circumstances, putting us on the road to a single-payer system.

When government controls your health care, you pay them at gunpoint and when you want care you get in line behind people who paid nothing into the system. That is socialized medicine, the dream of all Democratic socialists.

And there’s also redistribution of wealth:

Massive New Subsidies. This includes not just subsidies to help low-income people buy insurance, but expansions of government programs such as Medicaid and Medicare.

And remember what I said about the government needing to reducing costs when demand skyrockets for “free” care?

Government Playing Doctor.   Democrats agree that one goal of their reform plan is to push for “less use of aggressive treatments that raise costs but do not result in better outcomes.”  While no mechanism has yet been spelled out, it seems likely that the plan will use government-sponsored comparative effectiveness research to impose cost-effectiveness guidelines on medical care, initially in government programs, but eventually extending such restrictions to private insurance.

This is all caused by the good intentions of people who have no knowledge of economics, whatsoever. And it is important to note that it is this kind of naive, incompetent meddling in the free-market that leads to poverty and the loss of all of our liberties.

Further study

Here are some previous links that are relevant: