Bits 'n' Pieces

United States

Rep. Mark Souder (R, Ind.) and former Congressman Tom Coburn (R, Okla.) send letters to the federal Centres for Disease Control and the Food and Drug Administration urging them to put medically accurate warnings on condoms. In 2001, a CDC study found "there was no ... evidence that condom use reduces the risk" of infection for human papillomavirus, the cause of nearly all cervical cancer ... Gloria Feldt, president of Planned Parenthood, says: "The so-called Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 could put doctors in jail for providing the best and safest health care to women." President George W. Bush promises to sign the act once the House of Representatives and the Senate reconcile differences in their bills and pass them ... Unrepentant abortionist killer Paul Hill is executed on Sept. 3 ... According to the Yale Daily News, the Yale Choose Life student group is requesting that the university's health services department rebate $1 to pro-life students. It argues that they should not be forced to subsidize abortion. A similar rebate program is operating at Harvard. Approximately 100 Harvard students annually request the rebate.

Canada

Grant Hill (CA, Macleod) announces he will not seek re-election in the next federal election. Hill, who served as a deputy leader of the Canadian Alliance under Stephen Harper and a challenger for the party's leadership in 2002, has held strong pro-life, pro-family views ... NDP leader Jack Layton invokes party discipline on the issue of same-sex "marriage" as he argues it is a matter of fundamental human rights. Bev Desjarlais (NDP, Churchill) has indicated that she will oppose the redefinition of marriage because of the outpouring of concern in her riding ... Alberta, B.C. and Quebec seek intervenor status in the same-sex "marriage" referral by the federal government. Only Alberta opposes redefinition of marriage to include homosexual couples ... Planned Parenthood is mailing condoms to 15,000 Canadian households. They will will arrive in envelopes marked with the words, "It's hard to buy a condom when your uncle owns the only pharmacy in town."

Reprotech

University of Connecticut researcher Jerry Yang says three adult pig clones have unexpectedly dropped dead from sudden heart attacks. He describes the phenomenon as "adult clone sudden death syndrome." Nature magazine commented: "The pigs' demise is a stark reminder that cloned animals are far from normal. Many fall ill or die just after birth" ... Panayiotis Zavos, associate director of the Kentucky Centre for Reproductive Medicine and IVF, has again claimed that the first human cloned embryo could be implanted into a surrogate mother's womb before the end of the year ... The New York Times is advertising sex selection IVF. The Genetics and IVF Institute uses a sperm sorting procedure trademarked as MicroSort to offer the service for "family balancing" and the "prevention of genetic diseases" ... Research conducted by Dr. Andrew Feinberg of the John Hopkins Medical Institutions in Baltimore and Dr. Michael DeBaun of Washington University in St Louis, published in the American Journal of Human Genetics, finds that there is a possible link between the amount of time IVF embryos spend in culture fluids prior to implantation and disruption of genetic imprinting, leading to a disorder known as Beckwith-Wiedmann syndrome ... Brazilian heart patients have received adult stem cell treatment as a substitute for heart surgery. According to the Australasian Bioethics newsletter, doctors extracted bone marrow cells from a patient and successfully injected them into the left ventricle.

Euthanasia

Since it was legalized in Belgium in September 2002, 170 cases of euthanasia have been reported. The Belgian Medical Journal says many euthanasia cases are unreported. It estimates that the real number could be three times higher than the official number ... A report published by the British Voluntary Euthanasia Society claims that 30 per cent of people who help others to die go on to commit suicide themselves. The report also claims that between 40-50 per cent of doctors have received a request for assisted suicide. A Home Office spokesman responded: "Our law needs to take into account the value of life and vulnerability of individuals who are ill and in pain. That is why the law protects them. We have no plans to change the law at present" ... Lesley Martin, the head of the pro-euthanasia group Exit New Zealand, is charged with murder after admitting in a book that she gave her mother a lethal injection. She will be tried next year and could face 10 years in prison.

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