Several bloggers — Laer and Hugh Hewitt among them, are reacting to this BBC news item:

Doctors at the University Hospital of Lausanne treated eight children with skin grown from foetal skin cells.

The wounds closed after just over two weeks, meaning there was no need for potentially scarring skin grafts.

But the British Association of Plastic Surgeons cast doubt on the findings, saying there was no proof the wounds would not have healed by themselves.

The Swiss doctors developed the skin from cells taken from an aborted foetus, an online Lancet report said.

To those among us that value their own existence over that of nascent human life, this is great news. To those of us that value life from the moment of conception, it’s just another slide down the ever-more-slippery slope. At least the BBC reporter has the fairness to present a dissenting opinion in this article:

But Nicholas Parkhouse, a consultant plastic and reconstructive surgeon and member of the British Association of Plastic Surgeons, said the concept was interesting, but the study did not prove it worked.

“These burns may well have healed on their own account, and this is the problem with research into treating burns – it is hard to get a comparison.

And he added: “Second-degree burns will often heal of their own account – so is this skin even needed?”

A lot of times when you read pro-fetal-stem-cell research articles from the MSM, there’s very little or no opposite viewpoint expressed. I certainly didn’t expect it from the BBC. But, just to make sure that us aging Baby Boomers paid attention, the article follows up the dissent with the always frightening and effective “A-concept”.

Meanwhile, the New Scientist has reported that experiments in mice have revealed that stray foetal stem cells can colonise the mother’s brain, raising the prospect that brain conditions, such as Alzheimer’s, could be treated by injected foetal cells into the bloodstream.

Many of us have lost a parent or other aging relative or friend to Alzheimer’s. It is an absolutely terrible disease to witness the destruction from and, I would imagine, to suffer from. Watching a healthy, 60-70ish, 180-pound, inquisitive fellow that was a lifelong partner, lover and an awesome dad deteriorate into a 100-pound, skeletal, non-aware shell of a man almost killed my mother. Regardless, from the evidence of their strong Baptist beliefs, I know that neither of them would have wanted spare parts from aborted fetuses to have been used to spare him from his fate.

We are becoming weak, selfish and blinded-by-science to what is most important in life — which is not just life itself, but what we do with it while we are living it. (db)

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 18th, 2005 at 11:39 am and is filed under Culture of Life, Medical Issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.  |   Print This Post  |   Email This Post

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