April 2014

3 Things You Can Do

Two weeks from now, we will be showing Breeders at the Roxie Theater, right in the heart of San Francisco. Jennifer Lahl (director, writer, and producer) and Cameron Shaw (cinematographer) will be on hand for a Q&A following the screening. As you already know, we’re used to going into diverse audiences and places to screen […]

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Human Embryos as a Planted Corn Crop

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Remember in the early days of the embryonic stem cell debate being repeatedly assured that “all” the scientists wanted were ”leftover embryos due to be destroyed anyway” (from IVF) for use research? It was always baloney. “The scientists” just wanted to get people used to destroying embryos as if they were a mere corn crop. Now that […]

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NYT “Chimp Attack” on Human Exceptionalism

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The New York Times is on an anti-human exceptionalism crusade. Other than columnist Ross Douthat, when was the last time the “paper of record” allowed arguments to be made in favor of the unique dignity of human life in its pages? I can’t recall a single time in recent years. But take actions to subvert […]

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Assisted Suicide Frees Doctors’ Inner Kevorkian

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Pathologist Jack Kevorkian infamously assisted the suicides of people he had not actually treated, or even examined. He would look at medical records, speak to the victim, and bring on the carbon monoxide or suicide machine. Similarly, a Swiss doctor assisted the suicide of a man he did not physically examine, and took umbrage that authorities […]

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What to Watch

When Jennifer and I went to UC Irvine a few weeks ago to show Breeders, I casually referenced the film Gattaca during the Q&A that followed the screening. Even as I was saying it, I wondered how many people in the room had seen the film, now 17 years old. I don’t remember Gattaca being […]

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Entertainment at the Expense of Children

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A new graphic novel, Pregnant Butch: Nine Long Months Spent in Drag, chronicles the pregnancy journey of a lesbian named Teek and her partner, Vee. While the novel is fiction, it’s based on the author’s own experience parenting her son. It’s a humorous take on the subject of lesbian pregnancies with one reviewer noting “This […]

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These Issues, This Work…Faithfully, Charitably

As I write, I am in the midst of a season of busy travel, showing our films Breeders and Eggsploitation, speaking about surrogacy and egg donation, attending and speaking at conferences, and meeting with allies and supporters. All this comes on the heels of one of our best Paul Ramsey Award Dinners ever. Dr. William […]

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Alabama Supremes Accept Unborn Child Rights

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This will not impact the abortion issue because of federal preemption. But the Alabama Supreme Court has accepted that fetuses and embryos “from the earliest stages of development,” qualify as a “child” under Alabama law. The case involves a law that criminalizes exposing a child to harmful chemicals. Sarah Janie Hicks took cocaine while pregnant, […]

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Soylent Green is Fetuses

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I reported here a bit ago about how some hospitals in the UK were using the bodies of aborted and miscarried fetuses as fuel for the heating system. Now, dead fetuses are being incinerated to create electricity in Oregon and Canada. From the Lifesitenews story: The British Columbia Health Ministry has admitted that the remains of […]

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Post’s Junk Biology Pushes Human Cloning

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Here we go again! Now that human cloning has been done with adult cells, the pro-cloning crowd pushes it using junk biology–just as they did in years past. First at bat: The Washington Post in an editorial. It acknowledges that embryonic stem cell research is controversial because it destroys embryos. Then, it pretends that human […]

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How Media Helps Push Us Off Suicide Cliff

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I’ve seen it again and again in my more than twenty years of opposing assisted suicide: the media promote suicide in the guise of reporting the news. Indeed, these days, it is almost a universal rule. Here’s the biased–both by what is reported and what isn’t–usual pattern: 1. Make sure the headline promotes assisted suicide, particularly important since […]

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An Update on Cindy’s Story from Breeders

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A Texas appeals court has ruled that Cindy Close, who is featured in our film Breeders: A Subclass of Women?, is the legal mother of her twins. Cindy was in a non-romantic relationship with Marvin McMurrey III when they decided to have children together using donor eggs and his sperm for Close to conceive via […]

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Adults Cloned! Outlaw Before It’s Too Late

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Once Dolly the sheep was manufactured, human cloning was always mostly a matter of developing the right technique. As I described elsewhere, it was a bit ago using fetal cells. Now it has apparently been done with adult cells by Robert Lanza of Advanced Cell Technology. From the Time story: ​​In this case, cells from a 35-year-old man […]

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Pregnancy, why bother?

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There are those hushed, polite conversations when people wondered why Tag Romney and his wife, who already had three children naturally, chose to have three more children via gestational surrogacy.  The celebrity surrogate pregnancy stories always raise more eyebrows.  Why did Sarah Jessica Parker, already a proven birth mother, use another woman’s body to have […]

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Govt. Pay Seniors to Sign Advance Directive?

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I am in favor of advance directives. And I usually like Senator Tom Coburn, But this idea seems wrong-headed to me. Coburn has introduced the Medicare Choices Empowerment and Protection Act, that would pay Medicare beneficiaries to prepare an advance directive. From the story: The “Medicare Choices Empowerment and Protection Act” was introduced Friday by Sen. […]

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Some Dutch Pharmacists Say No to Euthanasia

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As we move into a morally polyglot society–with the culture of death rushing to the fore–the question of medical conscience will become increasingly hot button. This is apparently already occurring in the Netherlands where many pharmacists apparently refuse to dispense drugs for use in lethal injection doctor-administered homicides. From the DutchNews.nl story: Dutch pharmacists sometimes refuse […]

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Embryo Value Debated in Europe Too

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Pro embryo-destructive research activists are often so irrational. They claim than an embryo isn’t an embryo but merely a “bunch of cells.” Well, for the reductionist minded, so are they. They claim that an embryo is no different than the cells you kill when you brush your teeth. But embryos are organisms and mouth cells are […]

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Switzerland’s War on the Elderly

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The UK media has reported the case of a third healthy elderly woman in the last several weeks having flown to Switzerland to be made dead. From the Express story: ANOTHER British woman has been helped to die at a Swiss suicide clinic because she had grown tired of life, the Sunday Express can reveal. The 99-year-old Londoner, […]

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