Was some Stem Cell Research Reckless and Without Regard to Others? by Donna Young
Stem Cell research has likely been a waste of the taxpayer's hard earned money. The cultures were created in mouse embryo cells. Where was the thinking of the labs? Who was risked to latent disease? How might that be passed onto the next offspring? Should scientists be charged with criminal medical research for reckless chance taking of spreading disease to the human race? Did they not think of disease that would mutate from one species to another, like the Mad Cow Disease? Concerns of Donna Young, researcher.
Bioethics & Science
http://kaisernetwork.org/daily_reports/rep_repro.cfm#20793
Scientific Panel Says Embryonic Stem Cell Lines Available for Federally Funded Research Unsuitable for
Human Use
[Nov 11, 2003]
A scientific panel convened at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore on Monday said that the embryonic stem cell lines currently eligible for federally funded research are unethical to use for transplantation into human patients, the Baltimore Sun reports.
The 18-member panel -- which comprises scientists, philosophers, ethicists and
lawyers from JHU, Brown University, the
National Cancer Institute, Harvard University Medical School and other universities and was created
to address "the next
generation" of ethical questions surrounding stem cell research -- said that because the federally
approved stem cell lines were
grown using feeder cells from mouse embryos,
the stem cells could infect humans with mouse viruses,
according to the
Sun (Bell, Baltimore Sun, 11/11).
President Bush on Aug. 9, 2001, announced a policy limiting federally funded
stem cell research to embryonic stem cell lines
created on or before that date. Bush's policy allows federal funding for experiments involving stem
cells already derived from
embryos but not for research that would cause the destruction of additional embryos (Kaiser Daily Reproductive
Health Report,
10/17).
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NOTE: The American Government, like the Canadian Government did not protect the newborn baby from
being harvested of
his/her stem cells, by means of early umbilical cord clamping. It seems all the doctors had to
do was provide a living baby, not a
well baby, and living mother, after "active management" not a well mother.
Note: PETITION www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/102580814
Please ask this site to have a Medical Alert Petition Site: petitions@earth.case2.com
We need support, Internationally, to help Canada correct or investigate present training of all medical persons who will or intend to be at a mother's birth.
We need support for informed choices, of both parents, that our babies are not being harvested by methods of Active Management.
___________________________________
OTHER ARTICLES OF INTEREST:
National Politics & Policy
Brownback, Antiabortion Lawmakers Plan Next Steps in Fight Against Abortion
[Nov 11, 2003]
Following the "legislative victory" of banning so-called "partial-birth" abortion, Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) and other antiabortion lawmakers are "planning their next steps" in their "effort to bit-by-bit dismantle Roe v. Wade," the Wichita Eagle reports (Bjerga, Wichita Eagle, 11/10). The bill banning partial-birth abortion, which President Bush signed last week, enacts the first federal law to criminalize an established abortion procedure. On Thursday, federal judges in New York City and San Francisco issued temporary restraining orders preventing the Justice Department from enforcing the ban. A Nebraska federal judge on Wednesday also issued a temporary restraining order (Kaiser Daily Reproductive Health Report, 11/10). Brownback is working on legislation that would require doctors to notify the parents of minor girls seeking abortions on military bases; a bill that would ban patents on human embryos; and a measure calling for the suspension of the FDA's approval of the medical abortion drug mifepristone. Each of the issues addressed in these bills "can stand on their own ... [or] you can weave them together," Brownback said, adding that his long-term legislative goal is to create a "culture of life" that makes it possible to overturn Roe v. Wade. However, Peter Brownlie, president of Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri, said that "conservative political power" -- not broad-based support -- is helping to advance antiabortion legislation. "Most Americans think this is an issue that should be decided between a woman, her doctor and whoever the woman decides to include," Brownlie said (Wichita Eagle, 11/10).
USAID Launches Initiative To Reduce Birth-Related Death, Postpartum Hemorrhage in Developing Nations
[Nov 11, 2003]
USAID on Friday announced a new initiative to help combat birth-related deaths in developing nations, calling for the attendance of skilled health care workers during births and low-cost drug treatment to stop childbirth-related hemorrhaging, according to a USAID release (USAID release, 11/7). According to a report released last month by the United Nations Population Fund, UNICEF and the World Health Organization, 95% of the 529,000 maternal deaths in 2000 occurred in Africa or Asia, 4% occurred in Latin America and less than 1% occurred in more developed regions. The maternal death rate in sub-Saharan Africa was 920 deaths per 100,000 live births, compared with 20 deaths per 100,000 live births in developed nations.
According to the report, most maternal deaths and disabilities came from delays in recognizing complications,
reaching a
medical facility or receiving quality care (Kaiser Daily Reproductive Health Report, 10/21). On average,
a woman will die within
two hours of the onset of excessive bleeding if she does not receive treatment, and 14 million cases
of post-partum hemorrhage
occur annually, according to the release. The initiative, with support from the American College of
Nurse-Midwives, JHPIEGO,
IntraHealth International and Management Sciences for Health, plans to equip birth attendants who work
in homes, health centers
and hospitals with the skills, medicines and other supplies they need to reduce maternal mortality.
USAID has already launched programs in Indonesia and is working on programs for Benin, Ethiopia, Mali
and Zambia. USAID is
also supporting the International Federation of Gynaecologists and Obstetricians' and the International
Confederation of
Midwives' "first-ever" joint statement and action plan to "accelerate" efforts that
aim to prevent postpartum hemorrhage,
according to the release (USAID release, 11/7).
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COMMENTS BY Donna Young: Concerns of Western Societies training of our medical experts and their
ethics who will be
dealing with the undeveloped nations: Oxytocin is probably planned for these ladies giving birth. And oxytocin is directed to have
immediate cord clamping, so this means undeveloped nation's babies will be harvested of their placenta
blood.
The deaths are likely involving episiotomy done on women and those anemic at the time of birth. Full information is often missing in research studies, often called evidenced-based science. They are being used to set a standard of policy to be imposed on all women, world wide, and must be very carefully reviewed as to "information left out."
Such a report of first choice of women is for active management, which does not support natural birth education and practice. The group that was supporting Active management was the Cochrane Library Group, that restricts reports. Such report may support a bias to increase drug use and to do immediate cord clamping and exploit undeveloped nation's babies. This will be for their blood taken if licensed persons collect blood from doing immediate and 30-second clamping as is being done in Western Societies and developed nations. This alone is exploiting the women giving birth, sacrificing their babies to be harvested.
The Policies to directed immediate cord clamping were put out by Western Societies experts, the Obstetricians and Gyncologists of Canada and the United States. The developing countries should be on the alert for deception of the newly trained medical persons in Canada and the USA. Policies failed to warn the public are Policy #216, November 1995, ACOG*; and Policy #71, December 1998 and Policy #89 May 2000 of SOGC. These policies should be under investigation by the United Nations with heavy fines on the Nations directing endangering to any one child, regardless of sex, color, race, or mental or physical disadvantage, or marital status of the mother. Comments by Donna Young.
(Note: This Policy #216, was silently retired in January 2002. The public at large was not informed it was a dangerous policy directing that all babies be immediately cord clamping for taking a pH test. The facts are that pH testing, like PKU tests can be done by urine tests. No needles need be inserted into healthy babies to risk them of viruses being put in their blood streams, or the risk of it.
Viruses can be slow and /or fast developing. Any cut on a mother's body or her baby's endangers both to staph infections and other risks of tetanus. These risks are in Western Societies hospitals, too, but are treated with drugs, and at the risk of starting yeast infections in both mother and the child.
Natural birth education and practice is what is need for all women, universal and signed birth contracts, that the mother wants a warm water birth, no drugs, no cutting of her body to deliver her baby, and no clamping of the cord, or cutting at the informed consent, the cutting is not a necessary procedure. It is only a cosmetic removal, and at risk of cord infections. Natural birth with least intervention is best after all, as to the traditions of our grandmothers, in Canada and the States, some 3 and 4 generations ago. At the beginning of the 1900's, c-section births were at 3 and 5 percent, today, they are a cut of the baby business, to surgeons, rising over 26 percent, in the USA.
The USA is budgeting for $20 billion dollars in the baby business, when natural birth would reduce that to the need of only a 5 percent of that budget. This means rented birth rooms, and total privacy, for natural birth attended by those of the mother's choice, a waiver to the hospital and doctor; and provision for the mother to call for the doctor, if needed, and not before.
Twenty billion USA dollars, or more, on a baby's birth, that should be natural, is ridiculous. Then the rising costs to educated damaged children is in the billions more for education of autistic children damaged by drugs and hasty clamping.
The facts are that Birth is not a sickness. What is needed is checks and balances on the medical policies that are needed to be investigated as to trends most harmful and who is guiding that and their involvement with the government and interest or conflict of interest in the drug companies and in research.
What is necessary to have healthy babies is for the mothers to-be, being told about the facts of the actual birth, and she and her spouse are educated on seeing a birth, that is natural, in warm water births, no drugs, and the mother is seen catching her own baby, bringing the child face out of the water (the baby is not a fish, but a mammal, like the whales). Such information should be required information in the physical education and health and science programs, world wide. If we all know not to clamp the pulsating umbilical cord, we will have ethical and adequately trained medical persons, male and females, from the ambulance medic to the surgeon, including nurses and midwives, now involved in supporting false medical practices with equal silence of wrongful and harmful practices, now taken world wide.
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Wisconsin Health Plans That Cover Prescriptions Must Also Cover Contraception, State Attorney General
Says
[Nov 11, 2003]
Health insurance plans in Wisconsin that cover prescription drugs must also cover contraceptives, according to an opinion issued on Friday by Wisconsin Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager (D), the AP/Duluth News Tribune reports. Lautenschlager's opinion, which she wrote at the request of state Sen. Gwen Moore (D), is not binding, but other lawmakers plan to use the opinion to bolster their arguments for enacting legislation requiring such coverage, the AP/News Tribune reports. In the opinion, Lautenschlager said that although the state does not have a law specifically addressing the issue, federal court rulings and the state court's interpretation of Wisconsin's Fair Employment Act make it "highly likely" that state courts would decide that plans offering prescription drugs must also cover contraceptives, according to the AP/News Tribune (Ross, AP/Duluth News Tribune, 11/8). Lautenschlager also cited a 2002 federal Equal Opportunities Commission finding that said that because prescription contraceptives are available only to women and because only women can become pregnant, excluding contraceptives from health care plans is a violation of federal sex discrimination laws, according to the Madison Capital Times (Weier, Madison Capital Times, 11/8). State Rep. Terese Berceau (D) said, "[T]he exclusion of contraceptives by any health insurance policy that covers other prescription medicines is just plain discrimination," adding that the attorney general's opinion "removes one more barrier and moves us one step closer and it's a day for celebration" (AP/Duluth News Tribune, 11/8).
In The Courts
Teacher Fired From Wilmington, Del., Catholic Academy for Publicly Supporting Abortion Rights Sues School
[Nov 11, 2003]
A teacher who in January was fired from an all-girls Catholic school in Wilmington, Del., for publicly supporting abortion rights on Friday filed a lawsuit claiming that she was discriminated against because she is a woman, the Wilmington News Journal reports. Michele Curay-Cramer was fired from Ursuline Academy a few days after her name appeared in a News Journal advertisement supporting abortion rights. School officials have said that Curay-Cramer was fired because she publicly opposed Roman Catholic doctrine, which opposes abortion rights. However, Curay-Cramer said that the church has not taken the same action against men who have expressed views that deviated from church teachings (Taylor, Wilmington News Journal, 11/8). In the suit, Curay-Cramer claims that her expressed views are protected speech under the Constitution and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended by the Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1979, according to the Associated Press. Thomas Neuberger, Curay-Cramer's attorney, said that private sector religious schools are not exempt from federal laws. "We are all equal under the law," Neuberger said, adding, "You can't get rid of people because they've spoken out about the rights of women. That's sex discrimination." The lawsuit also claims that Curay-Cramer's privacy rights were violated when the school publicly discussed her firing, according to the Associated Press. The suit names as defendants the school, the Catholic Dioceses of Wilmington, Bishop Michael Saltarelli, former Ursuline president Barbara Griffin and school spokesperson Jerry Botto.
'Unjustified Attack'
Barry Willoughby, an attorney representing the school, said that the lawsuit's claims are "without merit," adding, "Basically, we see it as a completely unjustified attack on the school's right to have its principles upheld by its teachers. By putting her name on that ad, she was attacking the fundamental values of the church" (Chase, Associated Press, 11/7). Willoughby said, "If a male teacher had put his name on that ad, he would have lost his job as well" (Wilmington News Journal, 11/8). The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in August dismissed a compliant filed by Curay-Cramer, saying it was unable to conclude that any violation of relevant statutes had occurred. State and federal law allow religious institutions to be exempt from prohibitions against religious discrimination, but Curay-Cramer said that the school is independently owned and "cannot hide behind its religious affiliation," according to the Associated Press (Associated Press, 11/7).
Contraception & Family Planning
FDA To Review Emergency Contraceptive Plan B for Over-The-Counter Status
[Nov 11, 2003]
The FDA next month will review Barr Laboratories' Plan B emergency contraceptive product as part of the drug maker's request for over-the-counter status, Bloomberg/Detroit News reports (Dooley, Bloomberg/Detroit News, 11/8). EC can significantly reduce the risk of pregnancy if taken within 72 hours of unprotected sexual intercourse. Plan B is thought to work by interrupting ovulation, preventing fertilization of an egg or inhibiting a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus. The Pomona, N.Y.-based generic drug maker last month announced plans to buy Plan B from Washington, D.C.-based Women's Capital Corporation. WCC, which was formed by a group of women's health advocates specifically to make EC available to the public, brought the drug onto the market after it gained FDA approval in 1999 (Kaiser Daily Reproductive Health Report, 10/6). In April, WCC applied to the FDA to sell Plan B without a prescription (Kaiser Daily Reproductive Health Report, 4/22). An FDA panel on Dec. 16 is scheduled to discuss whether to offer Plan B without a prescription, Bloomberg/Detroit News reports. Concerned Women for America, which opposes EC, will make a presentation at the meeting. Wendy Wright of CWA said, "There haven't been studies on the multiple effects or the long-term effects" of Plan B, adding, "They're putting young women at greater risk by giving them a false sense of security" (Bloomberg/Detroit News, 11/8).
Xenotransplants
Under FDA regulations, the approved stem cells would be considered xenotransplants -- transplants containing animal tissue -- and would be subject to greater scrutiny. Researchers developing stem cell-based therapies would have to conduct more research and document all of their efforts to prove that the therapies do not carry the risk of transferring an animal virus to humans (Kaiser Daily Reproductive Health Report, 8/24/01). Since August 2001, scientists have learned how to grow embryonic stem cells without using mouse cells. Although these newer cells are more medically promising and seem ideal for use in clinical trials, according to scientists, the Bush policy prevents federally funded research using these newer cell lines (Kaiser Daily Reproductive Health Report, 4/22). The panel said that because the stem cells available for federally funded research are unethical for use in patients, tests or transplants using stem cells that were not grown with mouse cells would have to be done using private funds and would be outside federal regulation designed to protect patients, according to the AP/Dallas Morning News. "That worries us," Ruth Faden, a member of the panel and director of JHU's Phoebe R. Berman Bioethics Institute, said, adding, "The first time you do something in a human being that's never been done in a human being before is a very big problem. It's a challenge" (Klug, AP/Dallas Morning News, 11/11).
National Stem Cell Bank
The panel recommended the creation of a new stem cell bank that would include a diverse range of donors, a "controversial long-term solution," according to the Sun. The panel recommended that the stem cell bank include a minimum of six common genetic variations relevant to transplant rejection in all people in the United States and the two most common variations each relevant to transplants in African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans and Asian Americans, according to the Sun. The panel expressed concern that research using only the stem cell lines approved by the Bush administration would benefit a limited number of people in the United States -- the people who have genetic makeup similar to the donors of the approved stem cell lines -- and would not be useful to racial minorities in the United States, according to the Sun. Organs grown from stem cells could be rejected by a patient's immune system if the donor does not match the recipient, the panel said (Baltimore Sun, 11/11).
Reaction
Establishing the bank would require creating embryos and then destroying them after stem cells are extracted, the Sun reports. "We were very mindful of the implications of our conclusion," Faden said, adding, "The new lines would require the destruction of human embryos" (Baltimore Sun, 11/11). The announcement was the "latest sign" of "friction" between stem cell research proponents and the Bush administration, according to the Washington Post (Washington Post, 11/11). Critics "assailed" the panel's solution, according to the Sun. Richard Doerflinger of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said that developing a stem cell bank would amount to creating "embryo farms" (Baltimore Sun, 11/11). An HHS spokesperson said that no one was available to comment on the panel's findings, according to the AP/News (AP/Dallas Morning News, 11/11).
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Search this www.lotusbirth.com web site for : AAP policy, SOGC policy, ACOG policy; Placenta; Fetus to Neonate Circulation; 30-second clamping; World Health Organization and Dupont ; Circumcision ; Dr. Sarah Buckley's Declaration ; Canadian Criminal Codes and when a baby is a person; and any other subject you may be interested in child birth. Search Lotusbirth
(Reference from Protect Babies
http://www.123-baby-birth.com)
Search at Google this web site for the " No Policies " on equal
protection to babies at from the various government officials who appointed representatives to protect
the public on medical
policies and practices; also the "No policies" of the various medical associations, societies,
and colleges did not live up to no
form of discrimination to women or the child of any kind. It is believed they had a duty to have
a policy of equal protection and
security of person, regardless of: age, mental or physical disadvantages ; race, color, social
or marital status of the pregnant
lady ; or belief or faith of the family, or genetic type of blood sought for by medical researchers,
for stem cell matching, and use of
white cells, mature red cells, platelets, enzymes, hormones, and plasma.
contact: Donna Young, Mother and Grandmother
Home: www.lotusbirth.com
References of research: www.lotusbirth.com/doc/FEB2003Lotusbirth-110.htm
A medical web site to visit:
Note: PETITION www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/102580814
Please ask this site to have a Medical Alert Petition Site: petitions@earth.case2.com
