Monday, 1 July 2013

Must-read pro-life news-stories, Mon 1 July

Top stories:

Mitochondrial research will cost lives
Mitochondrial research will cost lives, says SPUC. SPUC was responding to the announcement by Professor Dame Sally Davies, the government's chief medical officer that the government intends to bring forth draft regulations to allow the abnormal creation of human embryos in order to address mitochondrial diseases. In a statement, Dame Sally described the research as "life-saving treatment". A spokesman for SPUC responded: "In fact, the vast majority of embryonic children created in the laboratory are killed because they do not meet the 'quality control' requirements dictated by scientists involved in such increasingly macabre experiments. Also, over the past 20 years, proponents of human embryo experimentation have repeatedly claimed that such research offered the promise - and perhaps the only hope - of finding treatments for serious diseases. The public has been repeatedly misled. It is the biotech industry's excuse to create a genetically manipulated baby." [SPUC, 28 June]
Paul Tully, SPUC's general-secretary, told ITV News: "We're concerned that we are replacing what we know to be defective DNA in the embryos that we don't like with what we think is good DNA - but we can't be sure. Putting the money into this kind of research is denying funding to research which is needed and ongoing to help people with mitochondrial diseases and other diseases in other ways. We've seen the same thing before with stem cell research, we've seen it with IVF - promises that using embryos will lead to advances but come to nothing." [ITV, 28 June]

Tower Hamlets Council gets it wrong over teaching children about sex in science lessons
“Keep sex out of science lessons” was the key message from a demonstration of parents outside Arnhem Wharf Primary school in east London, organised by Tower Hamlets Parents' Action Group – SRE, and supported by SPUC Safe at School. 80 parents (pictured - click photo for high resolution) gathered outside the school between 2-3pm last Wednesday at exactly the time when Year 6 children inside the school were being shown sexually-explicit images in a science lesson from which their parents were unable to withdraw them. [SPUC, 27 June]

Other stories:

Abortion
Embryology
Euthanasia
  • Notorious child killer's suicide bid blocked after insanity reconfirmed [Mirror, 28 June]
Population
Sexual ethics
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