"How the first nine months shape the rest of your life"

In the cover headline to its current issue, Time magazine invites the reader to identify with the child before birth - How the first nine months shape the rest of your life.  The opening page of the article does the same, placing three lines of text over the mother's womb that read

The Womb.

Your Mother.

Yourself.

The writer, Annie Murphy Paul, is a journalist who covers science. Her article is about how science is now understanding the many ways in which our experience in the womb before we are born affects our health prospects and probabilities throughout our lives.

She comments, 'two years ago when I began to delve more deeply into the field, I had a more personal motivation: I was newly pregnant. If it was true that my actions over the next nine months would affect my offspring for the rest of his life, I needed to know more.' (p. 46)

The full-page cover photo shows a woman 10 days before birth. The unborn baby sucking her thumb is there in all her full-colour, icon-like golden glow on page 47, and on the contents page there is a photo of a newborn being weighed with the caption, 'the baby shortly after she left her first formative environment'. (page 5)

A small red box at the top left of each double page of the article carries the woird SCIENCE to remind you that this is science not opinion.

And the whole opening page (p. 44) of the article is taken up with a photograph of the pregnant mother's tummy 'great with child', photographed from the side, with only three, dramatically stark lines of text, like a poem:

The Womb.

Your Mother.

Yourself.

The article explores different ways our experience before we are born may affect us - pollutants, drugs or infections the mother is exposed to, and her health, stress level and state of mind; and the areas of possible impact currently under studt include heart disease, obesity, diabetes, depression and schizophrenia.

To see the online version of the article click here

Revised EU Directive on animal testing highlights Ireland’s urgent need to ban human embryo-destructive research

The European Parliament passed a draft Directive earlier this month, requiring Member States to use alternatives to animal testing where available and rejected calls to rule out methods using cells of human embryos involving the deliberate destruction of those human embryos.

Johanna Touzel, speaking for the Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community, said it was paradoxical to protect animals from suffering by methods requiring the destruction of human embryos, and warned that Member Sates that did not have an explicit ban on embryo destructive rsearch could find themselves forced by EU law to use alternative methods requiring the destruction of human embryos.

This comes as a wake-up call for Ireland, which has no law protecting the human embryo outside the mother following the Supreme Court ruling in the frozen embryos case, R -v- R.

Background

On 8th September 2010, the European Parliament voted to revise Directive 86/609/EEC on the protection of animals used in research. Where alternatives methods exist to testing on animals, the Directive requires Member States to introduce legislation making the use of these alternative methods obligatory.

The European Commission issued a set of questions and answers on the revised Directive. The thirteenth question is, ‘Would it be obligatory to use alternative methods involving human embryonic stem cells if these present themselves as alternatives to animal tests?’

The answer makes it clear that ‘the requirement to use alternative methods in place of an animal method’ is ‘a legal obligation that has been in place since 1986.’ And Articles 4.1 restates this.

The answer also says that where a Member State has legislation prohibiting the use of human embryonic stem cells ‘the revised Directive cannot overrule any such national prohibitions.’

The answer also says that the use of human embryonic stem cells as an alternative method of testing to using animals would be obligatory if it was recognised as an alternative testing method by EU legislation.

It seeks to reassure by saying, ‘No such legislation exists, nor is its adoption to be expected in the light of the above considerations.’ But Article 13.1 explicitly envisages legislation recognising alternative methods of testing. And the European Centre for the Validation of Alternative Methods is part of the European Commission as may be seen from its website.

The Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community, however, point out in their Press Release that in the European Commission’s own Alternative Testing Strategies – Progress Report 2009, which discusses the alternative testing strategies that are currently being developed, 5 of the 21 new methods involve the use of human embryonic stem cells obtained by deliberately destroying human embryos.

Furthermore, the Press Release points out that these new technologies based on destroying human embryos have been financially supported by the EU through the 6th and 7th Framework Research Programmes.

The Commission of the Bishops’ Conferences of the European Community had asked for an amendment to be introduced into the revised Directive that would have excluded human embryonic stem cells testing from the alternative testing methods, but the European Parliament did not make any such amendment.

Further resources click here

Brendan O’Connor’s inspiring article on the birth of his daughter with Down Syndrome

On 12th September, the Sunday Independent carried an inspiring article, ‘A prayer for my daughter’ by its columnist and RTÉ personality, Brendan O’Connor, on the birth only weeks before of his second daughter, Mary. It evoked a huge reaction from readers – the following week, 13 of the letters received were published.

The day before the Irish Independent’s Weekend magazine had carried another shorter, yet profound article by columnist, Mary Kenny, about looking after her husband who is deteriorating following a stroke.

What the articles have in common is a visceral bluntness, a shocking directness and honesty in articulating difficult dimensions of intimate human experiences, but an authenticity that connects with us as we read them, a ring of truth that involves us in the family stories they are telling. What is surprising about the two articles is that each leaves us with the same impression of a toughness of character in the writer and a highlighting kindness in the writing.

Mary Kenny’s piece describes the difficulties of taking care of her husband who is suffering from a progressive condition. Almost defiantly she sets before us the hard reality of her life caring for him – ‘I carry out my carer’s duties because it’s my duty: I’m the obvious person to do it.’ Right after she asserts how this has changed her. ‘Caring changes your value system. Kindness has become much more important to me than almost anything else. Abstract talk about “rights” and “equality” strike me as containing a great deal of hot air, whereas “kindness” and “genuine respect” for the person really do mean the world.’

And that’s just the right phrase, isn’t it, kindness means the world - gives us the right meaning of our world. ‘Governments have legislated to support the disabled, but no amount of law will produce kindness. And it’s kindness that matters. It lifts my heart, nowadays, when I encounter kindness – and it does happen.’

Brendan O’Connor’s piece is more extraordinary in the way it captures, as it were, in slow motion, his heart’s u-turn following the birth of his daughter, the way it turned his life inside out and upside down, dismantling the perspective he had lived out of up to that moment, and, to his surprise, landing him in a wider world, a world with a richer meaning, a world whose outer extent and inner atmosphere are defined by kindness.

‘Thursday two weeks ago, we went into Holles Street in the morning, tentative but full of hope; and by two o'clock, our hearts were broken and our lives were turned upside down.’ The discovery that Mary had Down Syndrome was a before-and-after moment. Looking back, he sees ‘life before Mary’ as ‘a different life indeed, when we were innocent and foolish and thought we knew what worries and troubles were.’

Like Mary Kenny, kindness has taken on a new importance. ‘I have learnt many things in the last few weeks. One thing is that kind words can be so important and such a consolation. I never gave much of a damn for kind words before.’ The consultant’s words to them, “Mary is Mary”, struck just the right chord. ‘But with those three words he came through for us in the most unexpected way. For some reason it soothed us as we stood there dazed, and in a waking nightmare.’ Kind words from all sorts of doctors, nurses, friends and some unexpected sources would help get us through the next few days.

He gives the example of a text message from the woman in their older daughter’s creche – ‘she sent the most beautiful text about how they looked forward to welcoming Mary there. For Sarah, it meant a lot that these people, who have embraced Anna so much, were also going to embrace Mary.’

In a series of amazing sentences he describes the transformation he was undergoing.

After we had our first child, I thought I saw the world very clearly for a while -- I saw clearly who my friends were and who I valued. After Mary, I thought I could almost see the difference between good and evil. And some people you just didn't want near you and some people you knew were good.

So now I know that people are amazing. And I have more of an idea what love and friendship and family and kindness are. Some days, in my more elated moments, I would think that having spent 40 years looking for the meaning of life, sometimes in the most self-destructive ways, Mary had taught it to me in a few days.

I don't know that I can put it in words yet but I think the meaning of life may be about now, and love, and not giving a damn about things that don't really matter.

The texture of the new world he has entered is one of greater realness, compared with where he was before. ‘Real life has begun. I have woken up. It's not all easy but it is real.’

And the principal reality that has entered his life is the new person, his daughter, Mary. It is she who has brought him into this new world. ‘But do I wish she had never been born? Do I wish that we had just been happy with one? Do I wish we could have our old life -- which I have idealised out of all proportion -- back? Not any more. She's here now, a part of our little family. And we'd be lost without her. She has burrowed her way into our hearts so there is no imagining the world any other way. And even if she broke our hearts a bit when she came first, she's fixing them up a bit every day.’

The concluding paragraph of this amazing article is a ringing affirmation, of trust in the new world he has entered, in which the word ‘okay’ is repeated like the word’ yes’ in Molly Bloom’s soliloquy:

The funny thing is, you know very quickly when something happens whether everything is going to be okay. And even in my shock and agony in that operating theatre, I think I suddenly knew everything was going to be okay. And it is. There might be sadness ahead and there might be challenges ahead. But everything is going to be okay. Everything is going to be okay. Better than okay.

Every human being brings something new into the world with them, the very mystery of their unique being as a human person, thereby making the world a bigger, better place. Kindness is the larger, better part of humanity, and vulnerability invites kindness from the human heart. Brendan O’Connor’s article gives us a rare opportunity of observing this expanding of world and deepening of heart as it happens.

Read Brendan O’Connor’s article here

Pro Life Campaign calls Irish Times Poll on Assisted Suicide 'misleading'

The Behaviour & Attitudes poll on assisted suicide published in The Irish Times on 17th September claims that 55% of the public support assisting terminally ill patients to end their lives with 32% opposed.

The question was posed as follows: “Doctors in some countries are allowed under strict circumstances to assist terminally ill patients who are in intense pain and who repeatedly express the desire to end their own live to do so. Should doctor assisted suicide be legalised under such circumstances in Ireland?”

Responding to today’s findings, Dr Ruth Cullen of the Pro-Life Campaign said:

"The result is not surprising as the question posed was highly emotive and was clearly going to elicit a predictable response. Also, given the wording of the question, I feel it was misleading for the Irish Times to headline the result with ‘Majority believe assisted suicide should be legal.’

If there were a fully informed debate on this issue, I have no doubt a majority would oppose what amounts to de facto euthanasia. If doctor assisted suicide were legalised in this country it would completely change the nature of medicine and the doctors’ duty to preserve human life.

It would also inevitably lead to some of the most vulnerable people feeling they were a burden on society and had a duty to die as the State would be sending out a clear message that it was legitimate to hasten the end of some lives.

There is a marked difference in the ethos of care of terminally ill patients in countries like Ireland where assisted suicide is not legal and countries like Holland where a once restrictive euthanasia regime has quickly escalated in scope" Ms. Cullen concluded.

Ends.

For more information contact the Pro-Life Campaign Press Office on 01-6629273

Judge blocks US funding of destructive embryo research - And what Ireland must do

This week in Washington DC, a federal judge blocked the implementation of President Obama's executive order allowing federal funding of research requiring the destruction of human embryos, saying it was against federal law.

Judge Royce C Lamberth said the legislation enacted in 1996 by Congress, the Dickey-Wicker Amendment, prohibited ‘research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death greater than that allowed for research on fetuses in utero.’

In 1999, in an attempt to get around this clear ban, Harriet S Rabb, a lawyer with the US Department of Health and Human Services came up with an argument that the ban only covered the killing of the embryo, but that the research involving the cells that the embryo was killed to extract was not banned.

Judge Lamberth rejected this: ‘The language of the statute reflects the unambiguous intent of Congress to enact a broad prohibition of funding in which a human embryo is destroyed. This prohibition encompasses all “research in which” an embryo is destroyed, not just “the piece of research” in which the embryo is destroyed’, which was Rabb’s argument.

The Obama administration has pledged to appeal the decision.

The decision by UCC and other Irish third level colleges to allow research on their campuses using cells that needed human embryos to be deliberately destroyed to get them relies on the same ethically phoney distinction.

And the same thirst of the embryo research industry to get their hands on a steady supply of human embryos to extract elements for use in research is evident in the ghoulish recommendations of the 2005 Report of the Commission on Assisted Human Reproduction which the Irish Supreme Court deferred to so conspicuously in its R -v- R decision. The Ethical, Scientific and Legal Issues concerning Stem Cell Research: Opinion, issued in 2008 by the Irish Council for Bioethics, made similar recommendations based on equally fallacious arguments.

Every year since the Commission on Assisted Human Reproduction published its discredited Report, however, in one professionally conducted opinion poll after another carried out for the Pro-Life Campaign, the Irish public has shown itself, by a substantial majority, to be consistently and coherently in favour of the Dáil enshrining protection of the embryo in legislation, as has been done in other EU jurisdictions like Germany and Italy.

Not only that, it is the ethically non-controversial adult stem cell research that is bringing in the breakthroughs in the clinical management and treatment of a range of conditions, not the ethically objectionable embryo-destructive research.

This was confirmed in a review piece by Associated Press Science Writer, Malcolm Ritter, at the start of this month. With the heading, ‘Adult stem cell research far ahead of embryonic’, the article states:

"For all the emotional debate that began about a decade ago on allowing the use of embryonic stem cells, it's adult stem cells that are in human testing today. An extensive review of stem cell projects and interviews with two dozen experts reveal a wide range of potential treatments.

Adult stem cells are being studied in people who suffer from multiple sclerosis, heart attacks and diabetes. Some early results suggest stem cells can help some patients avoid leg amputation. Recently, researchers reported that they restored vision to patients whose eyes were damaged by chemicals.

Apart from these efforts, transplants of adult stem cells have become a standard lifesaving therapy for perhaps hundreds of thousands of people with leukemia, lymphoma and other blood diseases".

You can read the Associated Press article here

Let’s hope the ethical difference between treating someone with their own cells, on the one hand, and on the other hand, destroying another member of the human family in order to get some of their cells to use in research or treat someone else, will be grasped by the Minister for Health and Children, Mary Harney and her officials as they draft the embryo legislation expected this autumn. And let’s hope, too, that they will see and seize the golden opportunity to promote Ireland as an international centre of excellence in adult stem cell research.

'Save the Baby Girl' - Monitors put on Ultrasound Machines in India to prevent female foeticide

A recent BBC News interview showed a doctor in India doing ultrasounds with mothers. Behind him on the wall was a large sign Disclosure of sex of foetus is prohibited under law. But the 2003 law has been largely ignored, with doctors colluding with mothers wanting to identify baby girls before birth so they can abort them.

The report showed a new device called the Silent Observer which records all use of the ultrasound units and uploads it onto a government website where it can be monitored.

Further research yielded a report on this initiative which requires all ultrasound centres in the Indian state of Maharashtra to install and use the Silent Observer and requires online reporting and uploading of the testing done with the ultrasound – a sort of spy in the clinic, to deter doctors from facilitating female foeticide.

The scale of the gender imbalance is highlighted in the fall in the relative number of girls under six years of age. ‘A defining indicator of the grim scenario is the sharp decline over the last decade in the child sex ratio for the age group 0-6 years … from 945 in 1991 to 927 in 2001. Alarmingly, the urban areas, more literate and therefore perceived as being more modern, have shown a huge 29-point drop from 935 in 1991 to 906 in 2001.’ In the state where the ‘Save the Baby Girl’ pilot project was started, Maharashtra, the female sex-ratio fell from 946 in 1991 to 917 in 2001 and the drop was found to correlate with the number of ultrasound centres.

‘The gender composition in south and East Asian countries has worsened over a period of time. The skewed sex ratio indicates gross violation of women’s rights.’ And they acknowledge exacerbation of the problem by modern technologies – ‘The sex determination of foetus by technologies like ultrasound scanning, amniocentesis and in vitro fertilisation has aggravated the situation to an alarming level’ adding ‘if Asia’s sex-ratio was the same as [the] rest of the world, in 2005 Asia’s population would have included almost 163 million more women and girls.’

The root cause, however, is the social and cultural view of the woman as inferior to the man that leads girls to be seen as a costly burden which families have to pay heavily to get rid of in a dowry so that ‘the birth of a girl is seen as a calamity to be avoided.’

The violence against women that gendercide is described as ‘A pernicious form of violence against females in some parts of India has been - and still is – the elimination of the girl through female infanticide. Various methods have been used to extinguish the girl after birth, such as starving, poisoning or crushing her under the bed, etc. We should note that the task of female infanticide was laid upon the woman/mother, as she was considered responsible for bringing the baby girl into existence.’

This ‘Save the Baby Girl’ project is to be welcomed as a step in right direction towards equality of treatment of baby girls in India before and after birth.

You can watch the 4 minute BBC News report here

You can read the full article about this initiative here

'A kind of miracle' - Ciaran Finn-Lynch, the first child in the world to receive a windpipe transplant helped by his own stem cells

Earlier this month, 11-year-old Ciaran Finn-Lynch, originally from Castleblaney, Co. Monaghan, was discharged from Great Ormond Street Hospital in London having made medical history, the first child in the world to undergo a trachea transplant in which his own stem cells were used to ensure a donor windpipe would not be rejected by his body

He was born with Long Segment Tracheal Stenosis, which narrows the windpipe. Previous interventions, starting when he was two-and-a-half, had included attempts to rebuild his airway and inserting metal stents.  Last November, however, the erosion of a stent caused a ‘massive bleed’, prompting the specialists to look at a treatment using his own stem cells to build up a donor windpipe so as to prevent rejection of it by his body.

The operation, carried out in March, was declared a success when the medical team found that the blood supply had returned to the trachea. Professor Martin Elliott, the leader of the Transplant Team, said Ciaran ‘is a wonderful boy who has become a great friend to us all, and he and his infinitely patient family have charmed us all. … 'His recovery has been complicated, as one might expect for a new procedure, and we have kept him under close surveillance, hence the length of time he has been here. … It is wonderful to see him active, smiling and breathing normally.’

This kind of operation, a donor transplant where the patient’s own stem cells are used to prevent organ rejection, was first carried out on Claudia Castillo, a 30-year-old tuberculosis patient, in Barcelona, Spain in June 2008. Professor Martin Birchall said that the success of that operation left us 'on the verge of a new age in surgical care'.

The Irish Independent reports further comments of Professor Birchall on Ciaran’s operation. He said 'This is a completely new approach … the first time this has ever been done in a child. … He is left with a healthy organ made with his own stem cells which in a way is a kind of miracle.’

To read more and watch a 1 minute interview on Ciaran’s operation by Professor Martin Birchall, Professor of Laryngology from University College London, click here.